


watching over someone from afar

by FortySevens



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Because it's funny, F/M, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Frank traumatizes Foggy multiple times, I just want Karen and Sarah to be best friends, Post DDS3, Slow Burn, Women Being Awesome, bed sharing, post tps2, seriously the slowest of slow burns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: The moment Karen Page steps foot outside Metro General, she decides to leave everything about her relationship with Frank Castle behind her in that godforsaken building.So much of her relationship with Frank has been tied to the hospital—the incident with Grotto, the beginnings of Nelson & Murdock’s work on his case, and now this, 'I don’t want that'—so that’s where it’s going to stay.—That was the plan.But, you know what they say about the best-laid plans.Written for Kastle Christmas 2019 for goddamnitkastlewrites!
Relationships: David "Micro" Lieberman/Sarah Lieberman, Frank Castle/Karen Page, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 228
Collections: kastlechristmas2k19





	watching over someone from afar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goddamnitkastlewrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitkastlewrites/gifts).



> Happy holidays Megan (aka goddamnitkastlewrites on Tumblr), it’s me, your Kastle Secret Santa! 
> 
> The prompt was a fic based on any song in your Kastle playlist, and OF COURSE Taylor Swift’s The Archer came out and smacked me right in the face, especially the lines, “I don’t want that” (duh), and “Help me hold onto you.” 
> 
> I’d been noodling on how to use The Archer for a fic for a while, and here we go! Hope you enjoy the slow burn, angst, found families and holidays, along with a very large dash of the women of The Punisher ACTUALLY BEING FRIENDS LIKE THEY SHOULD BE. 
> 
> Title for this fic does not come from The Archer, but instead comes from the quote, “Watching over someone from afar is a kind of love too.” Which was said by Sailor Pluto in the original Sailor Moon Manga. A little backstory, I was scrolling through my Tumblr when I should have been working on a program I was launching, and stumbled upon the quote while I was thinking about this fic. I realized it was perfect for not just Frank with Karen, but also David with Sarah and the kids, and David tracking Frank while he was being an idiot throughout TPS2 and not actually calling in all the resources he has for help.
> 
> But that’s a topic for another time that I am absolutely not bitter about :-D
> 
> Enjoy!

The moment Karen Page steps foot outside Metro General, she decides to leave everything about her relationship with Frank Castle behind her in that godforsaken building.

So much of her relationship with Frank has been tied to the hospital—the incident with Grotto, the beginnings of _Nelson & Murdock’s _work on his case, and now this, _I don’t want that—_ so that’s where it’s going to stay.

She’s never going back to her first New York apartment—nor did she ever get around to patching the bulletholes in the last one before she moved out. She’s also never setting foot in the diner where Frank used her as bait, he’s sure as shit not likely to drop by her current apartment for a visit, and it’s getting too cold to go back to the waterfront.

All in all, it means it’s really not all that difficult to leave everything about her history with Frank behind her in Metro General.

Losing herself in the crowd of doctors, nurses, patients and administrators evacuating the hospital courtesy of her diversion—the least she can do, really—Karen squares her shoulders and turns her back to the building, heads in the direction of the offices of _Nelson, Murdock & Page_.

It’s time to get back to work.

For the next week, Karen throws herself into the firm’s latest cases with the tenacity not unlike how she started her career as a reporter. She makes it a point to ignore both Matt and Foggy’s questions about what happened the day she walked back to the office without her shoes, and also avoids the news for as long as The Punisher is the reigning headline.

Having to avoid The Bulletin’s coverage isn’t difficult at all.

The little television they have in the office waiting room—their current offices are a far cry from the space they were crammed into at _Nelson’s Meats_ —goes from MSNBC to HGTV. The talk of home renovations is a low murmur in the background as they work until Matt breaks down, because he cannot stand the female host on _Love It or List It’s_ accent, let alone the obnoxious amount of pretension in the entire show. So, they turn the thing off entirely when they don’t have clients in, and when they do, it stays on something innocuous—The Weather Channel.

About a week and a half after the incident, Karen thinks she’s just about gotten back to some kind of equilibrium.

Or something like it, at the very least.

It’s the equilibrium where she knows Frank is out there somewhere, doing what he does and is probably injured in some way.

The knowledge exists kind of like a fly buzzing somewhere behind her.

Easy enough to avoid unless she allows herself to think about it, which unfortunately happens when she’s alone. And these days, her solitary time comes very easily.

It’s a blessing and a curse.

But it’s how she lived between seeing Frank on that rooftop, plugging those ninjas that were after Matt and Elektra, and running into him outside The Bulletin a year later, when he needed her help to track down Micro.

Not a great way to live, but her life hasn’t been all that great since Kevin died.

If anything, she’ll endure.

She always does.

—

It’s early on Friday afternoon.

Matt’s in court and Foggy is on a call with a potential client, and Karen is idly debating sneaking out and calling it the weekend. Sure, there are some depositions she could go over, some research to do on behalf of one of Matt’s clients, but the case isn’t anywhere near trial and it’s been a calm week, one of those rare times at _NM &P_ where they don’t have a thousand things bearing down on them from a hundred different directions.

Also, she’s freezing, and really wants to put some sweats on.

Just as she’s made her decision and is about to shut down her laptop and shove it into her purse, the door, with its somewhat squeaky hinges—she makes a mental note to pick up some WD-40 the next time she runs to the store—swings open, and Karen slides out from behind the desk to greet whomever just stepped into their small waiting room.

When she sees her, Karen stops short.

The woman looks _very_ familiar, about half a foot shorter than her, with red hair lying in soft waves over her shoulders.

“Hi,” the woman says, and for the life of her, Karen can’t place her.

“I’m not sure if you remember me, but my name is Sarah-"

_Oh_.

“Sarah Lieberman.”

Sarah nods, and damnit, everything from last year comes racing back to the front of her mind with a vengeance that twists her stomach into knots.

“Yeah, hello,” Sarah says, looking a little out of sorts. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Why is she _here_?

Karen tries not to let the frown show on her face, but she doesn’t think she’s very successful, “It’s nice to meet you too. How can I help you?”

“My husband told me that you saw our, uh,” she tilts her head a little, pointed, and flicks a glance in the direction of Foggy’s office before she looks back at her. “Our _mutual friend_ , and—well, I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to pry, but I thought you might need to have someone to talk to about it. I know he can be kind of a whirlwind, and—“

A laugh escapes her before she can tamp down on it, “That’s one word for it,” Karen sobers a little, shakes her head. “I’m not really sure what there is to say, at this point.”

“I thought about that for a long time after, _you kno_ w _,_ ” Sarah says—and the fact that _she_ knows that Karen knows what happened means David Lieberman really did tell her everything. “For a while, all I had was my husband to talk about it, though my daughter tried, with me, at least. I just wanted to keep her as far from it as possible. She’s too damn smart for her own good sometimes, you know? I pushed it away for so long, until I realized that I _did_ need to talk about, I still do, especially after everything that just happened. Sometimes, I understand how it is, how our friend pushes away the people who cares about them to keep them safe, but then, these things happen, and I just get a little confused.”

Sarah pauses, and blinks a couple times, “I’m sorry, it’s so hard to talk about this without actually talking about this, you know?”

Yes, she does.

And honestly, she was about to pass, to tell Sarah that she doesn’t want or need to talk about it, but then—

It looks like the Lieberman family is in the same boat she is, with Frank.

And Sarah needs her just as much as, yeah, Karen could use someone like Sarah in her life right now.

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

Sarah smiles, and like a switch flipped, she looks so much more comfortable than she did when she first walked into the office, “Sure.”

With a wave in Foggy’s direction—he’s still on the phone and she’s never been so grateful for whoever’s kept him occupied for so long—and Karen and Sarah head out and down the street to get coffee. This isn’t exactly a conversation they can have at Karen’s local coffee shop— _Nelson, Murdock & Page_ has been in the location long enough for the baristas to know her drink order, and she loves it.

Since it’s too damn cold to talk in the park, or really anywhere else remotely public, Karen invites Sarah to her apartment.

Sarah perches on the couch and Karen settles into the armchair across from her. Karen wraps her hands around her coffee mug, trying to get the warmth to seep into her chilled fingers.

“So,” Sarah says around a sip of coffee. “My husband asked me to tell you that he intercepted the footage of you setting off the fire alarm at Metro General the other week. He cleared it off the server so no one would arrest you for aiding and abetting.”

Well, that explains why Mahoney wasn’t on her ass after the hospital.

“Oh,” Karen clears her throat. “Thank him for me?”

“As soon as David got wind of something going on—which, you and I both know doesn’t take much—he tried to get in touch with Frank. He didn’t tell me much, but he did say that the one conversation he did have with Frank didn’t last very long. That, plus David erasing your footage, and I remembered what happened at the hotel with Lewis Wilson, I made David tell me how you were connected to Frank. You know, everything that wasn’t reported on when you were working on his case."

There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to ask, but—

Her hands clench around her coffee cup, “What did your husband tell you?”

“That you’re one of the most important people in Frank’s life.”

Sarah says it like it’s obvious, and maybe it is, if that’s why he’s pushing her away so hard.

If Frank would rather have his war instead of, well, _anything_ , and that way she’ll stay safe.

It doesn’t make much sense to her, but then again, it never has.

“I’m not sure how much that means, but thanks for telling me,” Karen says, and then something occurs to her. “How exactly did _you_ meet Frank?”

She knows it was the info she dug up from Ellison that led Frank to Lieberman’s house, and ultimately to Micro—to David—but she doesn’t know much more than that.

Sarah smirks, leans in like she’s about to tell her a secret, “Well, I kind of hit him with my car.”

Karen’s brows hike to her hairline, and Sarah laughs.

“Well, only technically,” she amends. “The more I thought about it, after I found out that he was Frank Castle and not Pete Castiglione, I’m pretty sure he threw himself into my car to get David’s attention. David kind of wired our house with security cameras to keep an eye on me and the kids while he was in hiding.”

Karen blinks.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled when I found out about that part,” Sarah tips her head to one side. “You know how it is.”

Keeping secrets behind her back, _for her protection?_

She really, really does.

“Maybe, in retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest idea to let some strange man into my house, to fix my garage door, the kitchen sink, my car, spend time with my kids, but Pete— _Frank_ —was—“

A man like Frank, dealing with a family the mirror image of the one he lost, Karen knows exactly what he was.

“Yeah,” Karen clutches her coffee, tries to will the warmth in the cup into her still-chilled hands. “I think I understand.”

—

Sarah doesn’t stay much longer—David is almost helpless in the kitchen if the food needs to be anything in the realm of actually cooked—but they exchange phone numbers before Sarah gets into the cab and heads to what Karen can only imagine is their little corner of suburbia, not unlike where the Castle house rested before Frank burned it all down.

Before Sarah left, she extracted a promise out of Karen to come to dinner next weekend and meet the rest of the family.

Especially David.

As Karen walks back into her building, her phone chimes. She glances down to find a text from Foggy, “ _Who was that you left with earlier?_ ”

There’s really no way to explain it, and definitely not over text.

“ _Just a friend of a friend. Have a nice weekend Foggy._ ”

—

The impending dinner at the Lieberman’s house looms large over Karen for the next week, and it comes both far too soon and not remotely soon enough. It’s one of those things that leaves her stressed out and on edge, even as she tries to reason with her traitorous brain that it’s just the Lieberman family, just dinner, and nothing is going to _happen_ outside of that.

Like, no surprise guests, or anything.

On her way out of the office, Karen ducks separate invitations to drinks at Josie’s from Matt and Foggy, and slips into a cab without letting on just how much her stomach twists with nerves at the idea of finally meeting the man who helped Frank get to the bottom of what happened to his family.

David and Sarah live in a quaint, two-story house outside the city in a suburb of Queens, a cozy neighborhood so similar to the Castle’s that she makes herself to the deep breathing exercises she read about online once to keep herself from having a full-on anxiety attack by the time she reaches their front door.

Shivering when a blast of cold air smacks her in the face as she gets out of the cab, Karen hustles up the front walkway, doesn’t have to knock on the door before it swings open to reveal a tall man with curly hair and knowing eyes.

“Karen Page,” David Lieberman says, moving aside to let her into the warmth of the house, and he quickly shuts the door behind her. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“You too,” she holds up the bag in her hand. “I hope you don’t mind, I picked up some dessert on my way in.”

“If it’s anything chocolate, the kids will be all over it,” David takes it from her. “And uh, just to clear the air, lay everything out on the table, you know, I did look into you during the bombing mess. Needed to make sure you weren’t going to screw over our friend.”

So, David probably knows more about her than she’d like, but she doesn’t flinch, “And I’m the one who gave Frank this address after you got in touch and scared the ever-living shit out of him.”

David’s laugh echoes through the foyer, and he shakes his head, “In retrospect, I should have guessed he went to you.”

“From what I could guess, you had other things on your mind at the time.”

“Just a few,” he says, then sobers. “But I never would have been able to get back to my family had you not sent Frank here. So—I owe you one.”

“You helped Frank stop the people who destroyed his family and his life. Let’s call it even.”

Before he has the chance to say anything to that, Sarah pops out of the kitchen, “Karen! You made it! Come on in, dinner’s almost ready.”

The next few minutes are a whirlwind. A glass of wine appears in her right hand, and she’s introduced to the kids, Leo—who looks at Karen like she wants to ask her a million questions, all about a certain elephant in the room, because really, that’s what Frank is to her right now—and Zach, who is cordial enough, but would probably much rather be upstairs playing video games.

Karen can’t really blame the kid.

Her brother used to be just like that.

Halfway through her glass of wine, and Karen is emboldened enough to lean against the end of the counter that breaks up the kitchen from the dining room, where David is setting the table, “I also need to thank you for dealing with my footage problem at the hospital.”

David waves a hand gripping the cutlery in dismissal, “It was nothing.”

“It was definitely a lot more than just _nothing_. The NYPD would have been more than happy to book me as an accessory.”

There’s something about the way David looks at her, meets her gaze with startlingly clear eyes, which sets her further on edge, “Frank would have had my ass if I let you get drawn any further into his mess, you know that.”

She takes another sip, resists the urge to drain her glass, “If you say so.”

“I tried to help him with that mess, too. He’s pretty obvious, if you know what to look for, and I kept an eye out, even after he left town. But he wouldn’t let me.”

“Wouldn’t let either of us,” Karen tilts her head. “What did he say to you, when you tried?”

For a moment, David stops setting the table and considers her, “You sure you want to know?”

“Can’t be any worse than what he said to me,” she shrugs with an ease she definitely does not feel, tries to press away the memories of that conversation in the hospital room.

David chuckles wryly, “Said I’m an idiot for trying to give up what I got back, just for his goddamn sake.”

Unbidden, Karen laughs and it hurts like hell, “Sounds like him.”

David looks at her and shrugs.

Karen shrugs right back.

What else is there to say?

—

Try as she might, as she sits in the Lieberman’s living room after dinner—banished from the kitchen for trying to help clean up after they finished eating—Karen still feels that feeling you get when you aren’t sure if you left your curling iron on at home, but you’re stuck in meetings at work all day and you have to just hope that when you do get home, you’re not going to be faced with the charred remains of your bathroom.

And that feeling buzzes in the back of her mind _all the damn time_.

It’s stressful, unsettling, and leaves knots in the space between her shoulderblades that would take a masseuse a month to work out.

If only she could afford that on her _NM &P_ salary.

After a minute in exile, Leo comes out of the kitchen, sits down on the armchair across from her, “Hi.”

Karen tilts her head, “Hi,” she says. “I know you’ve wanted to ask me something all night, so go ahead.”

Leo’s cheeks flush, and she chuckles a little, dips her head before she looks Karen in the eye in a way that she can only describe as incredibly unnerving, especially coming from a 15-year-old, “Frank is you friend, isn’t he?”

Well, that _is_ one hell of a question.

Karen looks down at her hands, and then back up at Leo, “Frank doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends, per se,” she tries to say diplomatically, especially since she doesn’t really know where the line is that Sarah and David probably have with her. “And I don’t know what he thinks about it, but he is important to me.”

“He helped me when those people kidnapped Mom and Zach.”

“I know,” Sarah filled her in on those terrible stretch of days. “Do you have any more questions?”

Leo nods, opens her mouth, but then closes it again and looks away.

Scooting toward the other side of the couch, Karen reaches out and places a hand on her arm, “What is it?”

“Do you know if he’s okay?”

No, she does not.

“Frank is very good at taking care of himself,” she answers, for lack of much else to say. “I haven’t seen him recently enough to be sure, but with Frank, as long as it’s not confirmed that he’s actually dead—and even sometimes when it is—he’s usually out there somewhere, doing what he thinks is best.”

Leo looks at her for a long time, considering, and Karen resists the urge to fidget, “That does’t really sound like an answer at all.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

At that, Leo sighs, and suddenly turns back into a 15-year-old, “Oh well.”

Yeah, pretty much.

—

A week after that first dinner at the Lieberman’s, they invite her over again. And again, and then it turns into a standing invitation once a week, be it Friday or Saturday or Sunday, depending on what everyone’s schedules look like.

One night, late in December and after a few months of dinners that fortunately aren’t nearly as awkward as the first couple, David and Sarah invite Karen over to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, sundown on Friday.

She’s at the house often enough that it feels less like Frank’s ghost lingers around them all—even though he hasn’t actually set foot in the house in years.

Or maybe, she’s just getting used to it.

That’s probably it.

You can get used to a lot, when you’re exposed to it long enough.

Even trauma.

Karen brings dessert, as she always does—this time, it’s chocolate chip rugelach from a Jewish bakery not far from _Nelson’s Meats_. When she gets out of the cab, she’s faced with snow falling in fat flurries that soak into her hair and down the back of her neck.

It’s this exact time of year that always makes her wonder why she settled on New York after she left Vermont all those years ago, rather than somewhere that actually has comfortable seasons.

“Jesus,” Sarah hisses as soon as she opens the door, sweater drawn tight around her shoulders. “How did you get out of the city with the weather like this?”

“My cab driver was fearless,” Karen hustles inside, into the warmth, and passes off the box of desserts. “I, on the other hand, feared for my life for a majority of the drive, more than I did when I was held hostage by that bomber.”

The door shuts behind them with a resound thud, and Karen peels off her gloves and wriggles out of her damp jacket, hangs it on one of the hooks on the wall. Sarah snorts and shakes her head, “I don’t know how you do it. Any of it.”

She knows Sarah means all the shit she gets up to, but Karen use shrugs, doesn’t answer.

There’s really no way to explain it.

Getting into shit is just a part of her.

It’s so deeply ingrained into her DNA by now.

Sarah clasps her elbow, and when Karen looks up from toeing out of her snow boots, she sees a sympathetic smile on Sarah’s face, “Yeah,” she sighs, shoves her hands in the pockets of her fleece-lined jeans. “I know.”

“Well, there’s nothing to it now,” Sarah decides as she tugs her deeper into the house, toward the dining room where Leo and Zach are arranging five menorahs on sheets of tinfoil atop a rolling cart by the window, quietly bickering about which candles to use for tonight. “I hope you don’t mind, but we didn’t want to leave you out of the festivities tonight.”

“No, thank you. I’ve never done the Hanukkah,” she breaks off, not sure what to call it. “You know, the prayers, before.”

Sarah drops the desserts off on the kitchen counter, “I’ll give you a crash course.”

She does, and Karen takes it all in—a little more about what Hanukkah is about that she doesn’t already know, how tonight is a little different from usual because along with it being the first night, it’s also Shabbat, and how the candles look _amazing_ on the eighth night, when all nine candles are lit up.

When it’s technically ‘sundown’—it could have been hours ago for all of how cloudy and snowy it’s been all day—Karen goes through the motions of the prayers and candle lighting along with Sarah, David, and the kids, before Leo pulls her back into the living room, a handful of gold-wrapped chocolate coins in her hand, to show her the finer points of dreidel before dinner is ready.

Dinner is brisket that has been cooking for the better part of the afternoon, along with roast chicken and vegetables. And wine, a lot of good wine.

After dessert comes an absolutely cutthroat game of dreidel, where Karen cleans up—to David’s absolute dismay.

The evening drags on, the house smelling like leftover brisket and melted candle wax, and Karen winces when she looks at the clock, “I should probably get going.”

“Come on, there’s no way you’re getting in a cab and getting home with the weather this bad,” Sarah protests after a glance out the window. “I’ll make up the guest room for you.”

“Thank you,” Karen smiles.

With her chin, Sarah nods to the bottle of wine on the counter, “You might as well grab that.”

—

In the morning, the streets are a blanket of white and snow is still falling heavily.

David drops the curtains and turns to Karen, who’s a little bleary-eyed from the wine hangover as she pours herself a massive mug of coffee, “Looks like you might be here a while.”

She toasts him with her coffee cup, takes a long sip, “I’ll help Sarah with breakfast.”

—

The morning after that, the snow has let up enough to see the houses across the street, and David is in the middle of setting the table for breakfast when his phone rings.

Fishing it from the pocket of his sweatshirt, his brow arches when the number reads NO CALLER ID, because there are only so many people with blocked numbers who would call him at 7:35 on a Sunday morning.

Well, just one in particular comes to mind.

He spares a quick glance to the activity in the kitchen before accepting the call, “Hello?”

“ _Lieberman, it’s me_ ,” says a very familiar voice, a voice that is frantic, worried in a way that makes David go tense, because holy fuck, it’s the middle of Hanukkah and he does not have time for his world to go to shit again. “ _I need a favor._ ”

With a frown, he turns his back to the kitchen, his mind already racing through the alphabet soup of networks he’s potentially going to have to back-door into.

Fuck, knowing Frank, it’s going to be the CIA, _again_.

And it was a bitch to do the first time around.

“What do you need?”

“ _I need you to track Karen Page’s movements over the last three days. She’s missing._ ”

“What?”

David blinks, glances behind him to where Karen stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his wife, _in his kitchen and definitely not missing_ , “Fr-“ he breaks off, because the last thing anyone in this house needs is for Karen to hear him saying Frank’s name, just in case this entire conversation goes to shit and Frank decides to go to ground _again_.

He has to be careful about this, and figure out what’s going on _first_.

Because Karen _isn’t actually missing_.

Over the connection, Frank lets out a grunt, “ _I went by her place, to check on her because of the storm, but she hasn’t been there in a couple days. I asked her lawyer friends and they don’t know where she is either. Murdock says she doesn’t have any hot cases that she’s working on, but I know there’s shit she doesn’t tell him, so she might be—_ “

“Uh, buddy-”

Ignoring him, Frank powers through, “ _Listen man, I know I haven’t been in touch in a while, and you’re out and I’m glad you’re out, because you should be, but if Murdock can’t find her, then I know you’re the only one who can. And if this has anything to do with that piece of shit Fisk, then I need to-_ “

“Frank, you need to hold on a second!”

Frank cuts off, and David glances over his shoulder to where Sarah and Karen have stopped cooking, made their way over to the island with identical looks of concern on their faces. David shakes his head once, scuttles into the living room for at least a modicum of privacy.

“ _David, please. It’s Karen, and you know what-_ “

He cuts Frank off before he can say anything that would break Karen’s heart, _again_ , because he’s not an idiot, and his wife tells him things, “No, look, I’m sorry, that’s not what I—there’s nothing to worry about. She’s here.”

There’s a beat of dead silence on the line before Frank clears his throat, “ _What?_ ”

“She’s at my house. Been stuck here since Friday night when the storm got bad.”

“ _She’s at your house_ ,” Frank parrots, like the words don’t make sense in English. “ _Why?_ ”

David glances over his shoulder, sees Karen watching and frowning, can only imagine what must be going through her mind right now, “Considering some of the things I’ve heard about the last time you two talked, I’m not sure how much of that is really your business, but Sarah reached out to her after your, uh, adventure in the hospital. They’ve been friends ever since, and we invited her over for Hanukkah.”

For a long time, Frank goes quiet on the call, “ _All right, uh—all right. Okay_ ,” he takes a deep breath that echoes over the line. “ _You might want to tell her to give Murdock a call, let him know everything’s Code-4._ ”

He can’t help but roll his eyes.

Frank is such a goddamn dumbass sometimes.

“I don’t think that’s the most important thing I need to tell her,” David says, pointed, scrubs his free hand through his hair. “Look man, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight and you two can hash this out? The streets should be cleared by then, and we’re doing night three of the Great Hanukkah Snow-In of 2019. The kids will be happy to see you too.”

“ _Lieberman, I shouldn’t-_ “

“You know I’m going to tell her everything about this conversation, right?” He cuts Frank off. “Including and _especially_ your uh—moments of concern just now. You might as well just come over before she makes me track you down anyway, get it all out of the way.”

There’s another long, _long_ pause, before Frank’s sigh gusts over the connection, “ _What time should I be there?_ ”

“Let’s go with six.”

“ _All right,_ ” he says after another moment. “ _I’ll see you later._ ”

Frank hangs up before David can tell him about the hell that’s going to rain down on him if he pulls another _road trip to Kentucky_ on them—Sarah was especially peeved at the first dinner Frank missed out on, let alone Thanksgiving—and David shakes his head, turns back to the kitchen.

Sarah’s still frowning, and she takes another step toward him, “David? Is everything all right?”

David looks from Sarah to Karen, and the look on her face tells him she’s done enough of the math to know at least some of what’s going on.

“You both might want to sit down.”

—

When Karen finally retrieves her phone from the nightstand in the guest room, she finds twelve missed calls—seven from a blocked number, with a corresponding voice message each that she does not have it in her to listen to—along with a number of increasingly frantic texts from Matt and Foggy.

Bypassing all of the messages, Karen opens a bank group text and taps out, “ _Sorry about that. I promise I’m fine. I’m staying with friends out in Queens and the neighborhood has been snowed in since Friday, so I haven’t been home._ ”

It’s way too blasé for how she _knows_ Matt and Foggy are likely to react to Frank popping back up in their lives, but it’s all she can think of.

Seconds later, Foggy texts back, “ _BUT WHY IS FRANK CASTLE LOOKING FOR YOU?_ ”

“ _I honestly don’t know, but if I figure it out, I probably won’t tell you. I think you’d be better off with the plausible deniability,_ ” she replies, and then adds. “ _Matt, I’m really okay, you can stand down_.”

Finally, Matt replies with, “ _Karen, call me. Please_.”

With a sigh, she hits his number, and barely gets through one right before Matt picks up, “ _Karen-_ “

“I’m fine, Matt. Sorry if he made you worry.”

“ _Where are you?_ ”

“Queens, like I said in my text. David and Sarah Lieberman were drawn into that mess Frank got into back when you were—recovering from Midland Circle.”

Well, _recovering_ is one word for it.

“ _What’s going on with you two_?”

She pinches the bridge of her nose. Part of her wants to _strangle_ Frank for whatever possessed him into thinking that going to Matt was a good idea, “Look Matt, I haven’t heard from him in months, and you’d know it if I were lying to you,” she blurts, and just can’t stop talking now that she’s on a tear. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, I don’t know why he decided to go looking for me, I don’t know what he wants, and I have _no goddamn idea_ why he would have gone to you, because we both know he doesn’t like you.”

For a minute, Matt doesn’t say anything, “ _Karen, are you okay?_ ”

“Every time I try to put something from my past behind me, it comes back to bite me in the ass,” she flops back onto the bed, covers her eyes like that’s going to stop the world from bearing down on her like it does. “I’m tired, Matt. I’m just fucking tired.”

“ _How can I help?_ ”

She lets out a heavy sigh, “I don’t want you to get involved.”

“ _If you’re sure._ ”

It must pain him to say that, since she’s pretty sure it’s nearly impossible for Matt to resist getting involved in her shit, but if there’s one thing she draws the line on, it’s him getting involved in her shit when that shit is Frank Castle.

She can only hope he keeps his word. She doesn’t need the two of them fighting on some Hell’s Kitchen rooftop, drawing attention that they don’t need as they beat one another bloody.

_That_ really is the last thing she needs.

After she hangs up, Karen goes back into the text thread, sees Foggy replied again while she was on the call, “ _You’re right. I really don’t want to know. God, what is it with you two and assassins?_ ”

Karen drops the phone on the mattress next to her and buries her face in her hands.

“Karen? Are you okay?”

Lifting her hands, she cranes her neck back, and from upside down sees Leo standing in the doorway, her hair mused from sleep and bright red bed-scars creased over her right cheek, “Sorry Leo, did we wake you up?”

“I heard Dad yell,” she sad, twisting her fingers in the hem of her hoodie. “Was that really Frank who called?”

For a second, she considers not telling her, to let her parents do it, but it’s going to be a wash considering he’s going to be here for dinner in a few hours, “Yeah, it was. I’m sorry if we woke you and Zach.”

Leo waves a hand, “Nah, Zach’s still asleep. He can sleep through anything,” she pauses, considering. “What did Frank say?”

“Not much. Your dad says he’s going to be here for dinner tonight.”

“Last couple times he said that, it didn’t happen,” Leo says with a roll of her eyes.

Sitting up and turning around so she’s not looking at Leo upside-down anymore, Karen shrugs, “Something tells me he’s actually going to actually show up, this time.”

Leo smirks, “I guess it makes sense, since you’re here.”

Before Karen has a chance to tell her that it was really all David, Leo disappears down the hall, feet pounding down the stairs seconds later.

She’s a good kid, way too smart for her own good, but Karen definitely understands why sometimes—usually when she’s drunk—Sarah calls her daughter a little shit.

—

When she finally makes her way back downstairs—phone safely in her pocket in case anyone tries to make contact—she finds David leaning against the back of the couch, a bowl of cereal in one hand, oversized spoon in the other, “You know,” he says, munching around a bite as Karen goes for the coffee pot. “Frank said something, on the call, that struck me as—really interesting.”

Scrubbing her palm over her face, Karen sighs and grips the counter.

She has a feeling she knows where this is going.

“What did he say?”

“He said that if Murdock couldn’t find you, then I’m the only one he knows who can,” David says, takes another bite. “What’s Murdock got on you, a homing device?”

Karen sighs again, drops her head in her hands, “Is there anything I can do to convince you to forget Frank ever said that?”

“Because you just said that,” he points at her with the spoon, drips fat droplets of milk on the floor. “Absolutely not.”

Yeah, she’s definitely going to kill Frank when she sees him.

—

Karen grows more and more stressed, the later is gets in the day.

Try as she might to tamp down on it, she knows it’s obvious how much that’s _not_ working when Sarah hands her a mostly-full glass of wine, with strict orders to, “Drink that before I find you something stronger.”

With a sigh, Karen takes a long sip, and it is _very good_ wine.

Trailing after her, Karen follows Sarah into the kitchen to pick at the platter of vegetables she put together, because the crunch of celery is just enough to drown out her thoughts—for the moment.

“It’ll be all right.”

She sighs, scrubs her hand over her stinging eyes, “At this point, I just don’t know what to say to him. It almost might be easier if he _didn’t_ decide to snoop around my apartment, or whatever the hell he was doing.”

Sarah leans on the counter, “When Frank blew his cover, and we realized that Pete—the man who was coming over and fixing things around here, spending time with my kids—wasn’t actually Pete, I was far from thrilled. And worst of all, I was confused, because I didn’t understand _why_ he kept coming around. When David came back to us and he explained everything, and then told me he invited Frank over for Thanksgiving, I just—I didn’t have a clue what to think, and yeah, there was a part of me that didn’t want him here. But I realized—and don’t get me wrong, this is a little bit because of all the trauma I’ve gone through—that more than anything, I just wanted to have a chance to talk to him without all the danger and _way too many damn guns_.”

At that, Karen laughs so hard she snorts and almost gets wine up her nose, “So, I guess this means I shouldn’t tell you about my .380.”

Sarah looks at her for a long moment, and then finally blinks, “ _You would_.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve needed it,” Karen shrugs. “But that still doesn’t mean I have a clue what to say to him.”

“It’ll come to you.”

—

About an hour later, there’s a knock on the door.

Sarah opens the door, “You’re late,” she says, voice as frosty as the weather Frank’s standing in.

From her sop on the far end of the couch, Karen sees Frank shift from foot to foot in discomfort as the shorter woman stares him down, “Uh—Lieberman said dinner’s at six.”

“I meant Thanksgiving last year,” Sarah’s pointed. “You’re really late.”

“I brought rosé?” Frank holds the bottle up. “And I’m freezing my ass off. Can I come in?”

With a shake of her head, Sarah grabs his arm and tugs Frank into the house, wraps him up in a hug, “It’s good to see you Frank. Staying away was noble, but very, very stupid.”

He wraps his free arm around her for a beat, “It’s good to see you Sarah.”

Frank sheds his beanie and jacket, looks past Sarah, and his gaze settles on Karen where she’s perched on the couch. She waves a hand, but before either of them can say anything, footsteps sound from the top of the stairs.

“Frank!”

In a flash, Leo flies downstairs, flinging her arms around him in a massive bear hug, “You’re here!”

“Hey kid,” Frank rasps, running one large hand over the top of Leo’s head. “Good to see you.”

She lets him go and steps back, “You’re _really_ late for Thanksgiving dinner, you know.”

“So your ma said.”

Then, Leo turns to Karen, “I _told you_ he’d come.”

As Sarah laughs, Karen sees one of Franks brows hike in the direction of his hairline, and Karen can’t help but laugh too, “Yes, you did,” she looks back up at Frank. “Hi.”

It’s then that David and Zach emerge from the kitchen, with Zach giving Frank a halfhearted wave, and David shakes his hand, “Good to see you, man.”

Frank nods, and then turns back to Karen, “We should talk,” he says, his dark eyes boring into hers in a way that makes her want to squirm, but she’s not about to do that. Not in front of the Lieberman’s, and definitely not in front of Frank.

As she stands up, Karen flinches a little, tamps down on the anger flooding through her, making her chest tight.

Of course, _now_ he wants to talk to her. Not months ago when she put her heart on the line.

With a shake of her head, she sighs, nods to the stairs, “Come on then.”

She leads the way up to the guest room, closes the door behind her and leans against it.

This is the first time she’s laid eyes on Frank since the hospital, and—

It fucking _hurts_.

Other than the lack of blood and bruises, Frank looks the same as he did months ago. A couple new scars here and there, mixed with so much heartbreak and exhaustion it makes her heart twist.

It also makes her wonder what he’s been doing since everything calmed down, if he’s even trying to take care of himself.

Frank looks back at her, and she wonders what he sees—if he sees someone who has been haunted by every single thing that’s happened in her past, if he sees a person he’s missed these last few months, these last few years, or if he just sees someone who got way too invested and over her head.

Even hours after her conversation with Sarah, she still doesn’t know what to say to him.

But that doesn’t stop the words from falling out of her mouth.

“You want to tell me what happened this morning?”

His brow twitches, but other than that, he’s impassive, “Lieberman not fill you in?”

God, he’s been so goddamn stubborn, and Karen clenches her hands to fists as she crosses her arms over her chest, “You called me this morning, _seven times_.”

Frank has the decency to at least look a little bashful, and he rocks back on his heels, shrugs one shoulder, “After what happened with Fisk, I was-“

She cuts him off, “It doesn’t matter what you were,” she snaps, because of all things she wants to relive, Fisk is not one of them. Not now, and certainly not ever. “You weren’t there for Fisk. It is what it is, and I made it out fine. It’s over.”

“You almost _died_.”

“So what? I’ve _almost died_ so many times in my adult life, I’ve lost count. It’s just another one of those things that happens to me, all right?”

Frank rakes a hand through his hair in clear frustration, trigger finger twitching as he paces back and forth between the foot of the bed and the window, “Karen, you can’t just-“

“I can do whatever the hell I want, Frank. You of all people know that.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m allowed to be concerned about your wellbeing when you disappear without a goddamn trace. You know you matter to me, Karen. I want to make sure you’re safe.”

She scrubs a palm over her cheek, breaths deep and resists the urge to cry, “I didn’t disappear,” she doesn’t care how obvious she is about ignoring that last part. “I’ve been here the whole damn time!”

“And _why_ are you here?” Frank gestures to the house around them. “What is all this?”

Slumping more of her weight against the door behind her, Karen looks up at the ceiling, “I’m here, because there are so few people left who love you Frank, and I wasn’t going to say no to getting to know them.”

Fuck, she didn’t mean to say that.

“Karen,” Frank sighs, deflating like the strings holding him up have been snipped, and he leans against the window, rakes a hand through his hair again and looks away from her. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s—I can’t—”

“Whatever you think it is, it’s not, it’s really not,” fuck, she barely knows if she is or isn’t actually doing anything right, right now. “It’s just people who love you, and it _is_ that simple. There’s no pressure. No one, not even me, is going to ask anything of your hat you can’t give. We all more than know better than to do that.”

Frank shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything else, and—

That’s what this is.

An impasse.

Just like in the hospital.

It’s what it always has been.

Karen pushes off the door, opens it, “Come on, we better head down to dinner.”

Another unfinished conversation to add to the books.

—

When they get to the landing, Karen puts a hand on Frank’s arm, stalling him, “You know, whatever you said to David, you pretty much blew Matt’s cover.”

He snorts, gaze shifting away from her in that way it does when he can’t bring himself to meet her eye—she’s not even sure if he knows it’s a tell, “What, you worried about _Murdock_?”

Goddamn it.

“I’m not getting into this with you again,” Karen snaps, eyes narrowing in a glare as she slips in front of him and _makes_ him look at her. “You know where I stand with Matt. It hasn’t changed since the last time we talked about it, or _any other_ time before that, and it’s not about to.”

How many times is it going to take to hammer this home?

“Either way,” she adds, acid in her voice, because she’s _tired_ of this goddamn story he’s made up for her and Matt. You hold hands once in front of a guy, Jesus. “He and Elektra are back together. She’s the woman I found in his bed after a date and a half. Not exactly what I’d call the foundation for any relationship I’d be interested in being part of. Which I’m _not._ ”

She turns her back and makes her way downstairs.

He’ll either follow her, or he won’t.

That’s his call.

—

Dinner is—it’s awkward, to say the least, but bless Leo for navigating it with a conversational bulldozer in the form of all the books she’s read since the last time she and Frank talked.

Karen keeps her gaze down on her plate, but even so, she can feel the heat of the looks Frank keeps shooting her way as Leo interrogates him on one of the books which—

It’s a surprisingly diverse list.

And one of the last things she wanted to learn about Frank is that they have frighteningly similar tastes in books. More than half of the ones he told Leo about are the same that she has stuffed on the bookshelves in her apartment.

She _really_ doesn’t want to know that.

Bless her, Sarah does what she can to keep the peace, but there’s only so much wine they can drink.

Karen switches to water halfway through the meal, and kind of just wants to curl up and die.

When dinner _finally_ ends, David takes Frank down to the basement to let him harangue him about his new network setup, and whether David knows it or not, Karen appreciates the break, follows Sarah into the kitchen to help her with the dishes.

“How are you holding up?” Sarah asks quietly, elbows deep in the sud-filled sink.

Even though she knew not to expect anything to happen, is _more_ heartbroken than she was a few months ago an answer?

Probably.

“I don’t know.”

“Did it help to talk to him?”

Karen shakes her head, and when her eyes start to sting again, she claps a hand over them, “Not remotely.”

Turning off the faucet, Sarah dries her hands off before wrapping her in a tight hug, “I’ll be okay.”

With a wet sigh, Karen drops her head to Sarah’s shoulder and holds on, “Thanks.”

—

“ _Are you shitting me Lieberman?_ ”

Karen looks at Sarah in question when they hear the faint echo of a thud down in the basement, but she shrugs, “I just focus on the washer and dryer, and ignore everything else David has running down there. It makes things a lot easier.”

“I can imagine.”

Shifting a little, Sarah glances in the direction of the door that leads to the basement, “How can we go back to whatever _normal_ is supposed to be, when we know the things that we know, when we’ve seen the things we’ve seen?”

Thee spot on Karen’s ribcage with the faded scars—the permanent, physical reminder of the night she lost her brother—twinges, and she resists the urge to press down on it to make the sick feeling go away, “If there’s one things I learned, there is no going back.”

From her perch in the corner of the couch, Leo looks up from the truly massive mythology anthology she’s been flipping through, but not being at all subtle about the fact that she’s trying to eavesdrop on David and Frank, “Tell that to Dad.”

“ _Leo_ ,” Sarah admonishes.

“What? Am I wrong? Frank Castle is _literally_ hanging out in our basement.”

As if his ears were burning, the man in question makes his way back upstairs, David at his heels. Both look more than a little frustrated, but Karen can’t be sure what they were arguing about, “I should get going,” he tilts his head toward the door. “Thanks again for dinner, Sarah.”

“You’re welcome any time,” she says. “Seriously.”

Frank nods, but whether or not he actually takes them up on the invitation, Karen has no idea.

“You want a ride back to the city, Karen?”

Her head snaps in his direction to find Frank looking at her like he did all through dinner, like he has a million things he wants to say to her, but won’t let himself actually say them.

After the day she’s had, the last thing she wants is to be stuck in a car with him.

“You don’t have to do that.”

She will wait an hour for a Lyft if she has to.

“Come on, it can’t be any worse than when I drove you back to the city after Schoonover.”

David’s brows hike to his hairline, “Dare I ask?”

Before Frank can answer, Karen shakes her head vehemently, “Absolutely not,” she sighs and looks down at her hands, then back up at Frank. “Thank you.”

—

After their quick goodbyes, which feature Frank promising he’s not going to disappear for another two years, and Karen promising to return the clothes she borrowed from Sarah at some point, she and Frank hustle to his truck to avoid being out in the cold for too long.

Inside the truck, which is old but well-maintained and runs like new—a truck that the Frank who didn’t have his life turned upside down might have gotten after coming from his final deployment, and Karen tries to ignore the twinge in her chest at the thought. Frank turns the heat on high before executing a u-turn in the middle of the empty street.

They drive for a while in silence, which is far too much like the drive out of the forest after Frank killed Schoonover for Karen’s tastes, but with fewer bruises, and Karen’s arm isn’t partially dislocated.

The silence isn’t any less uncomfortable, but another finds it in them to break it, not until the lights of the city loom ahead and they’re crossing the Queensboro Bridge.

“Karen?”

She lifts her head off the passenger window, finally looks at him, “Yeah?”

For a second, he doesn’t say anything, but Karen watches his throat work as he tries to say, well, _something_ , before he comes out with, “When I first found out about what happened with you and Fisk, I thought—fuck, I don’t know what I thought. But it pissed me off, because _I wasn’t there_ , and I should have been.”

Try as she might to tamp down on it, she thinks about the attack on The Bulletin, and how it might have gone if she had been able to get in touch with Frank, and he came in, guns blazing.

Would it have helped?

Would it have hurt even more than it already does?

Would Karen have been able to keep her old job?

Would she even have wanted to, in the aftermath of The Punisher’s interference?

“You didn’t _have_ to be there,” she turns in her seat to look at the side of his face, his eyes focused intently on the traffic ahead. “You had your pardon from Homeland and the CIA, and you were living your life. I’m never going to fault you for that. We had it handled.”

Frank scoffs, “Can’t tell how well it’s handled if Fisk ain’t _dead_.”

“You know Matt— _Daredevil_ ,” she amends, because there’s a fine line, but there is a difference. “It was never going to go any other way.”

With another scoff, Frank mutters something decidedly unkind about Matt that Karen decides against commenting on. Frank is stubborn like no one she’s ever met, but even if he wasn’t, there’s no way she’d try to foster any kind of peace between him and Matt. It’s just not going to happen.

And it’s not her goddamn problem.

“I still should have been there. Whether Murdock admits it or not, you needed the help.”

He says it like dealing with Fisk was some military operation that they decided not to seek his decades of expertise on, which is—a million miles away from the actual _point_.

“So what, you want it to be that the only time we ever talk is when my life is in danger, and when it’s not, you’re just out there, waiting for things to go to shit again? That’s not fair to either of us, Frank,” the tension headache that’s been brewing for the better part of the day finally asserts itself, and Karen fists a hand in her hair at the base of her neck to relieve some of the pressure. “I’m not going to live life that.”

Even in the flickering darkness, she sees Frank flinch and grip the steering wheel so tight his knuckles go white. He’s quiet for a long time, long enough that a part of Karen thinks that yes, that is what he wants, but then Frank sighs, say so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of the heater, “I don’t know how to do this anymore, Karen.”

It means so many things.

And it breaks her heart.

Karen drops her head a little and shifts so she’s resting on her hip, knee pressing into the center console, “You don’t have to have all the answers right now. No one is asking you to do that,” her throat hurts as she tries to get the words out. “Last time we talked, you told me about what you don’t want,” which never won’t kill her. “And what you _do_ want. Just take it one day at a time.”

The truck rolls to a stop, because rush hour is _every hour_ when you live in New York City, and especially when the weather is as bad as it’s been. Frank finally looks at her, bites down on his lip before he says, “I had to get you out of that hospital.”

Karen frowns, “What?”

“I couldn’t let you stay there any longer than you did,” he says, like that’s an actual explanation. “I would have said _anything_ to get you out of there,” _oh fuck_.” Woulda killed me if Bill got wind of you too. Guess it was luck Lieberman was snooping around, messing with those security feeds. Probably the only thing that actually stopped him from going after you.”

Karen presses her palm to her mouth, eyes wide in surprise.

If he would have said _anything_ to get her out of of there, then—

“So when I said I didn’t want, _that_ ,” he doesn’t need to elaborate on what _that_ means. “I lied.”

Her stomach completely bottoms out on her, and it’s all she can do to just gape.

_Oh fuck._

Frank’s mouth twists into something like a sympathetic grimace, “It’s still not safe, and I can’t risk you like that, I _won’t_ , but you were right, that night in the diner,” Jesus, is this night going to be a _Greatest Hits_ flashback to every single shitty moment of her adult life? “We don’t lie to each other, and I lied to you that day. Needed you to know that.”

He says it so simply, like, _I lied to you, my bad_ , when this is anything but simple.

Traffic opens up a little, and Frank starts driving again, but does glance at her quickly when she doesn’t respond, because she _can’t_ , “You okay?”

When she nods, she realizes she still has her hand pressed to her mouth, and she lets it fall to her lap, “I need-” fuck, what does she even need? “I think I need some time to think about this.”

Because he lied to her.

He _did_ want this.

But he still pushed her away.

“Take all the time you need.”

By the time Frank pulls up to her apartment, Karen isn’t _any_ closer to _anything_ anywhere near something coherent to say to all that, her mind an aggressive buzz of too many thoughts for her to keep track of or get organized in any way.

Frank may have had a shit streak of luck these last few years, but when it comes to finding a parking space in the city, he’s one lucky son of a bitch. Karen won’t have to go far, to get from the street to the front door of her apartment.

So, that’s something.

She’s spiraling. She’s _definitely_ spiraling right now.

Hell, she’s been spiraling for most of the goddamn day.

“You okay?”

Karen flinches a little when he breaks the silence, “That’s one hell of a question.”

Again, Frank gives her that sympathetic grimace, but then he asks, “Can I see your phone for a second?”

What?

She blinks, the question taking a few seconds to actually sink in, “Uh, sure?” She reaches into her purse and fishes it out, unlocks it before handing it over.

From upside down, she sees Frank key a phone number into her contacts, saves it under the name Pete Castiglione.

“You done with burners?”

“For the moment,” he looks up, grinning wryly. “Curt’s been on my ass about it.”

Well, that’s nice of Curt.

He hands her phone back, and she throws it in her purse, pulls the strap over her shoulder and reaches for the door, “Thanks for the ride, Frank.”

Before she can get out, Frank reaches over the center console and grabs her hand, his warm fingers wrapping carefully around her cold ones, and she resists the urge to shiver at that, and the way it feels when his calluses scrape across her skin.

“You call me, Karen,” his voice is low, raw, like it’s scraping its way out his throat. “You call me, or you text me, and I will answer. You need me, and I’ll be there. I promise. I’m not going to let this happen again.”

She wants nothing more than for it to be that easy.

But _this_ , can mean so many things, and as much as she knows he’ll be there the second she picks up, no matter what it is—that’s also the problem.

Because there is a line, a firm line—bright red tape of a line—between what she wants and what he’s willing to give her.

So, it can’t actually be that easy.

He has to be the one to bridge the gap.

“Okay,” she finally says, because it is, just okay.

Just okay is all she can ask for.

Sometimes, she feels like she’s come so far since that moment, since all the moments that have made up her life in New York, but most times—right now especially—she feels like she hasn’t moved an inch, that she’s still just that scared girl from Vermont who killed her brother and was exiled from what was left of her family.

Frank’s brow twitches, and for a moment she’s thrown back to that moment more than a year ago, when he first asked her to track down some spook by the name of Micro.

“Okay?”

A laugh breaks from her mouth before she realizes that’s the sound she made, and she shakes her head, “ _Okay_.”

Frank squeezes her fingers, laughs quietly under his breath, his face lightening in a way she hasn’t seen in so goddamn long. All she wants to do is stay here in this moment, holding his hand and having him look like her like his, like everything really is as easy as she wants it to be, but she can’t.

She _can’t_.

“Good night, Frank.”

Karen lets her fingers slip from his, and gets out of the truck.

When the door to her building closes behind her, Karen glances over her shoulder to see Frank still there, watching the building, and she knows he’s not going anywhere until he knows she’s safely in her apartment, which—

This is not helping the twisting in her stomach one bit.

Her eyes sting, and Karen waves one more time before making her way to her unit, wiping at her eyes as she takes each flight of stairs.

Dropping her bag on the couch, Karen clicks the light on and makes her way to the window where she used to keep the roses Frank gave her, which may or may not have been dried out and now live on top of her dresser, where she can see them every morning as she gets ready for work.

Pulling the curtain aside, Karen glances down at the truck, which—not only did Frank manage to _find_ a parking space, but somehow it’s one that allows him the perfect view of her living room window. It’s not until she leans against it, her fingertips tapping against the glass, that she sees the headlights turn on, and then Frank pulls out of the parking space and drives off.

When she loses his taillights around the corner, Karen drops the curtain and presses her back to the wall next to the window. She takes a deep breath and then another, but the second hitches halfway, and Karen presses her palm back to her mouth. It’s the one still warm from the heat of Frank’s hand, a shock of heat to the coolness of her skin, and that breaks her even more.

She slides down the wall, drops her head to her knees, and finally, finally lets herself break.

—

Karen doesn’t know what to do, now that she has Frank’s number.

It’s one thing to know he’s out there, and another to have some way to signal him, but it’s a far cry away to know that she can just— _call him_.

Ever since they met, it’s never been like this.

She still has no idea what Frank wants, what he’s actually willing to give, but all she can do is try.

All the same, next week, Karen decides to test the waters of whatever this is going to be now.

Since Foggy proposed, Marci has somehow managed to balance her high-powered law career with full-on wedding planning, and she’s meticulously put together the society event of the season. And since Marci is going big, bigger than big to celebrate marrying the man she loves, it means she and Foggy are throwing their engagement party in the penthouse suite of a fancy boutique hotel in Midtown.

On New Year’s Eve.

Karen has hours to kill since the party isn’t even starting until after nine, so the morning before, she texts Frank and asks him if he wants to bring in dinner and keep her company while she gets ready.

It’s a shot in the dark that he’ll even go for something like that, but—what the hell?

That doesn’t mean she’s not shocked when he responds with a yes.

They go back and forth for a few texts while Karen wraps up some research for one of Matt’s clients, with Frank vetoing each and every suggestion for takeout, and eventually, Karen just tells him that he can pick whatever the hell he wants, because _obviously_ , he knows better.

“ _Damn right I do_ ,” he texts back, and holy fuck, she never imagined he’d be one of those people who bantered over text. “ _I’ll take care of dinner._ ”

But instead of takeout from some hole in the wall she’s never heard of, Frank shows up at her door at seven with a canvas bag full of fresh groceries and takes over her kitchen, which—

What goddamn alternate universe has she landed in that has _Frank Castle_ cooking her dinner?

“Jesus Frank, you know there’s only two of us, right? There’s going to be leftovers for days,” she says when, on the way back to her bedroom to find her sticky cup bra—because there’s no way she’s going to be able to get away with anything else under the dress Marci and Elektra helped her pick out—she sees the giant platter he puts into the oven.

“Good thing too,” he snorts and closes the oven door. “Do you ever go grocery shopping?”

“Not when I have UberEats, DoorDash, and Seamless on my phone,” she calls over her shoulder. “You’d know what that’s like if you ever upgraded from that dinosaur of a flip phone.”

Frank snorts and turns his back to her, focuses on whatever he’s doing to the pile of vegetables next to her stove, “Dinosaur flip phones are harder to monitor.”

“You’re paranoid.”

He looks back at her, one brow cocked, and Karen shakes her head with a laugh, “ _Kidding_.”

“It’s not paranoia when you’re _right_.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

It’s not long after that they sit down for dinner, a cheesy noodle dish and sautéed vegetables, with the beers Karen had stashed in the back of her fridge. They make for a pretty absurd pair, what with Frank in a hoodie and jeans, a few stray bruises on his knuckles that Karen has made a point not to ask about, while she sits across from him in sweats over her shapewear, hair up in curlers and halfway down with her makeup.

It’s the least put-together she’s ever been around him, and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

She doesn’t know what to make of _any_ of this.

When she texted him yesterday morning, she was convinced that he’d say no.

But here he is.

Early on in the meal, Frank pulls an envelope to of his sweatshirt, slides it across the table, “Before I forget, this is for the Counselor and his girl.”

The front of the envelop has _Nelson_ scratched out in even, blocky letters, and Karen turns it over, sees the back isn’t sealed, “Can I?” Frank nods, and she pulls it open, peeks inside. Her brows hike up to her hairline when she sees the delicate cursive on a piece of shiny, black and white paper. “You got them spa gift certificates?”

“I remember wedding planning,” he takes a long pull from his beer, avoids her wide eyes, and she can see his ears go a little red. “It wasn’t easy for what Maria and I had to plan, especially since we only had weeks to pull it off. Nelson and his girl have at least ten times the pressure, so-“

Karen’s heart absolutely does _not_ do that nearly-painful fluttering thing that usually happens when she sees a smiling baby, or one of those cute puppy videos.

It does not.

She leans back toward the couch, stretching out and slipping the envelope into the purse she’s taking tonight, “Thanks. That’s really nice of you,” her gaze narrows a bit when Frank reaches across the table, tugs her arm and helps her back upright with ease before he retreats back to his side of the table. “And I can’t help but think you might have some kind of ulterior motive.”

“No motive. Promise. It’s just a gift for my lawyer.”

Karen rolls her eyes at the innocent look her gives her, “ _Former_ lawyer. I don’t think he’d take a meeting with you if you paid him.”

“Pretty sure his work on my case got him that swanky gig at _HC &B_,” Karen’s tilts her head in surprise, because she didn’t think he _knew_ about that. “Think that means he might owe me at least one phone call.”

She takes another bite of the cheesy pasta—okay, so maybe she’s really hoping Frank decides to leave her with some of the leftovers, because this is _amazing_ —and laughs, “I’d like to see you try to argue that. In fact, if you do, can you give me a heads up so I can record the look on his face?”

Frank salutes her with his beer, “Anything for you, Page.”

Goddamnit, Frank really cannot look at her like that and _say those things._

She has never been so grateful to have so much foundation on her face, and that her sweatshirt neckline is high enough to hide the way she flushes down to her chest.

Karen takes another long drink of beer.

This might actually be worse than the long months they went without talking.

Frank lingers in front of her bookshelf after dinner, after he insisted on taking care of all the dishes, and yes, did box up the leftovers and put them in her refrigerator. Karen hears him flipping through her books as she perches on the bathroom counter so she can finish her eye makeup, all smoky grays and silvers and ten tons of glitter, which is going to be a bitch to take off, but hey, it’s New Year’s Eve, and the party is going to have an open bar.

A far cry from last New Year’s Eve, which she spent at home, curled up on her couch hoping the next year would be better than the last.

It wasn’t, far from it.

But just because she doesn’t have very high hopes for 2020, doesn’t mean she can’t end the year with a little fun.

“You have any other plans for tonight?” She asks while putting the finishing touches on her eyeliner.

Frank chuckles under his breath, and the sound sends a bolt of warmth through her chest, “Yeah, _big plans_ ,” he says, sarcasm dripping all over his tone. “Just going to head home, catch up on my reading.”

She hops off the counter, leans against the doorframe and watches Frank put the book her was looking at back on the shelf, not far from the framed picture of her parents and Kevin, “That sounds nice.”

“Not sure it’s going to be as nice as that fancy party of yours.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen the shoes I’m going to be wearing all night.”

Frank arches a brow in question, and Karen laughs, “Let me get changed and I’ll show you.”

Slipping into her bedroom, she shuts the door behind her, presses her back to it and lets out a long, pained sigh.

This, all of this, is a million miles away from anything she ever expected.

But at the same time, it can’t last.

She knows he won’t let it.

With a shake of her head, Karen puts it all behind her, because there’s no point in dwelling on it.

The fact that Frank is _here_ , period, is just—

It has to be enough.

—

Once she’s squeezed into the long-sleeved, lace cocktail dress, Karen makes a final adjustment to the generous neckline, grabs her coat and the shoes she’s going to wear and slips back into the living room.

She finds Frank sitting on the couch, paging through her secondhand copy of _The Crackup_.

At thee sound of her door opening, he looks up, and it might be the glow from the laps she uses instead of the harsh, overhead lighting in her apartment, but she’s pretty sure his ears have gone red.

There’s a part of her that wishes she didn’t notice.

Frank closes the book, carefully places it on the coffee table before rubbing his palms flat over his thighs, “You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

It’s then that he finally looks away from her, to the shoes in her hand, which are twice as high as her usual day-to-day heels, and a hundred times more glittery, “Can you even walk in those?”

“Sometimes, I think I might walk better in heels than I do in flats.”

He looks more than a little skeptical, and Karen drops back onto one of her dining table chairs so she can slip the shoes onto her feet.

“I’m not sure that’s how that works.”

“And I’m not sure it’s physically possible to run through the desert with a hundred pounds of gear on your back, but you don’t hear me complaining,” she fires back.

Frank shakes his head on a laugh, and that’s when Karen’s phone pings with the notification that the car Elektra said she was going to send for her has pulled up and is waiting for her. Apparently that’s a _thing_ in her life now, since she’s back and she and Matt are together again—both as a couple _and_ as vigilantes, Karen is ninety-percent sure, “That’s my ride.”

Grabbing his jacket off the back of the couch, Frank stands and shrugs into it, “I’ll walk you out,” he makes his way over, holds a hand out to her and helps her to her feet.

In the heels, Karen has a couple inches of height on him, which puts her eye-line right to the spot on the top of his head where she knows, hidden under his hair, is the scar from the bullet that nearly killed him.

She wonders if there’s ever going to be a time where she looks at him and it doesn’t break her heart.

Frank drops her hand, which startles her out of her thoughts, her eyes going a little wide when he reaches up, “Sorry, you have a little, uh,” he hesitates for a second before he swipes his thumb over her temple, and it comes away with a few stray pieces of glitter from her eye makeup.

“Thanks,” Karen bites her lip, debates for a half-second before she runs her fingertips over the side of his thumb, a shock running through her at the warmth of his skin, before she wipes her glitter-covered fingers off on the back of the armchair. “Glitter is the herpes of makeup and crafting.”

That startles a laugh out of him, and the moment, whatever it may have been, ends.

Frank grabs her coat and helps her into it, “Come on,” he says as she belts it and grabs her purse. “Let’s get you to your party.”

Downstairs, Frank lets her steady herself on his elbow as she steps down to the sidewalk, then places his hand on the small of her back and walks her to the sleek black town car idling in front of her building. He opens the door for her, but before she can slip into the back seat, Frank curls his hand around her wrist, “Hey.”

Karen steps off the curb so they’re eye-to-eye again, “Yeah?”

“Thanks, uh—I know that this is, that this isn’t really easy to navigate, so—thanks for asking me to come over.”

Frank does that thing where he looks at her and then looks away, that tell of his that he definitely doesn’t know he has, and she shakes her head, “You told me you’d come if I called, so-“ she breaks off, pats her hand over the one still wrapped around her wrist. “And I’m glad you came. Just, keep taking it one day at a time, okay?”

Throwing caution—and her restraint—to the wind, Karen leans up and brushes her lips over his cheek, “Happy New Year, Frank.”

He dips his head, squeezes her wrist, “Happy New Year, Karen.”

She slides into the car, and Frank nods one more time, like he’s made some kind of decision, but that’s all she gets before he shuts the door, taps the roof of the car before he steps back up to the curb.

As the car pulls away, Karen glances out the back window and watches Frank wave before he shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket, hunches his shoulders and heads off toward his truck.

“What the hell am I supposed to do about that?” She sighs, slumping into her seat.

Maybe one day she’ll know how to navigate her life—okay, really just the part of her life with Frank in it—with actual confidence.

But it sure as hell isn’t going to be tonight.

—

The party is just barely getting underway by the time Karen arrives, one member of the wait staff taking her coat, and the other handing her a glass of champagne the second she walks inside the penthouse suite.

Okay, so sometimes Marci might be a little too much for her to handle, but there are still some serious perks to being friends with her.

Karen finds Matt and Foggy standing off to one side, hunkered down like Foggy is about to go to war, or argue the case of his career, or quit his career and become a butcher, rather than the celebration of his impending nuptials.

The second she make her way over, she’s drawn into a discussion about just how many uncomfortable conversations Foggy can potentially avoid with both Marci’s family members and his own, and it’s not until the room is filled with most of the guests and Foggy’s steeling himself to go mingle, when Karen remembers the envelope in her bag.

“By the way, this is for you,” she pulls it out of her purse. “From a very famous former client of yours, whose case still gives you nightmares.”

It doesn’t take long for him to get the picture, and Foggy gapes down at the envelope like she’s trying to hand him her .380, or a giant, venomous snake, “ _Why?_ ”

“I rarely know why he does what he does,” she waves the envelope at him. “And tonight he decided to give you and Marci a wedding present. You’re welcome.”

Foggy looks down at the envelope, and then back up at her, and back again, his mouth opening and closing, but he doesn’t manage to say anything.

“Does that mean you _saw_ him tonight?” Matt asks for him.

“Yes, it does,” she says, succinct, but is not about to explain that she invited him over for dinner. “Do you want it or not? I promise it’s a really nice gift.”

Foggy debates for a second before he finally takes it and glances inside, eyes popping open when he reads what’s printed on the glossy paper, not unlike how she herself reacted a few hours ago, “Wow, this is actually really nice,” his eyes narrow as he looks back up at Karen. “I can never tell Marci where I got this.”

“I know,” Karen shrugs and sips her champagne, which was free, and therefore the best she’s ever tasted. “You don’t have to tell her who it came from, or you can say it’s from me, if Marci asks. I just wanted to see the look on your face when I told _you_ who it was from.”

“You enjoy trying to give me a heart attack about this, don’t you?” He accuses.

Karen grins, “I have to get my kicks in somewhere.”

“You are the worst best friend in the history of best friends.”

At that, Matt laughs, “Really Foggy? Worse than me?”

Foggy glances back and forth between them, “Okay, maybe not worse. You two are equally terrible.”

She salutes him with her glass, “I can live with that.”

Right after that, Marci comes over to draw Foggy away to make nice with one of her aunts, and Matt shifts so he’s standing next to her, the can he doesn’t actually need clasped in both hands. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, ad she knows he’s focused on tracking Elektra as she makes her way through the room, until he says, “Do we need to talk about this?”

She resists the urge to roll her eyes, only because she knows he won’t see it, “What do yo want me to say?”

“I just want to make sure you’re being smart about this. You know what he does, what he’s _still_ doing. He’s not safe, Karen.”

It doesn’t surprise her at all that Matt’s also picked up on The Punisher’s activity around the seedier parts of the city. It’s been mostly quiet since the mess with the Schultzes died down, but Karen knows Frank’s MO well enough to be able to pick out which unsolved murders are actually his doing.

Karen drains her glass, and she knows that Matt knows she’s taking a second to figure out what to say to that. The problem is she has so many responses, but only a handful of them are appropriate for Foggy and Marci’s engagement party.

“Are any of us _really_ safe, Matt? After all the things we’ve done. The Yakuza, Fisk, the Hand, all the organizations I pissed off when I was at The Bulletin?” It’s a long ass list. “At least I know I have someone in my corner who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect me. You know he’ll do that for me.”

“And I hope you know I’d do that for you too.”

Of course he would, but—

There’s a reason she sees so much of herself in Frank. The darkness in him that has always called out to her own.

And Matt knows that too.

“There are lines that you won’t cross, and I don’t want you do. You have them for a reason, and I respect that. It’s why you have people like me and Elektra in your life.”

Matt’s quiet for a long time, “Frank said something similar to me too, once,” he finally says, and Karen turns to face him in surprise. “It was a long time ago, but—I do understand, Karen. I know you don’t always think so, but I get it. He puts them down and they stay down. It’s different from what I do.”

With a quick glance to where Elektra—beautiful, no longer dead, formerly brainwashed ninja-assassin Elektra—is dazzling some of the members of Foggy’s extended family, Karen puts her hand on Matt’s arm, “I know you get it,” she says. “Thanks Matt.”

On the other side of the room, she hears Trish call her name and gesture her over to the bar, “Excuse me a second,” she says, letting go of his arm.

“It still doesn’t mean I like the guy.”

Karen glances at him over her shoulder, scoffs, and this time she does roll her eyes.

—

Midnight comes and goes in raucous cheering and toasts, and Karen as they watch the fireworks explode from off the water,, Karen looks down at her phone in time to see a text from Frank come in.

“ _I have a feeling this year is going to be better._ ”

She sure as hell hopes so.

But that doesn’t mean she’s going to bet on it.

She doesn’t have it in her to do that.

Not right now.

—

It’s way after midnight in the depths of a gray and dreary January, and Karen is debating putting aside her pile of depositions in favor of going to sleep, when her phone buzzes on the arm of the couch. She catches it before the vibrations can knock it to the floor, see’s David’s cell number on the screen, “Hello?”

“ _Sorry if I woke you_ ,” David says, sounding as wide awake as she _isn’t_. “ _But I wanted to give you a heads up, you’ve got incoming in about five minutes_.”

She straightens from her slouch, “Incoming as in I need to evacuate or risk losing another apartment to a hail of bullets, or-“

“ _Oh shit, no, sorry. You’re fine_ ,” she breathes a sigh of relief, makes a mental note to remind David that he has to explain _before_ he scares the ever-living shit out of her next time. “ _Frank’s on his way to your place. He’s been a little bit stabbed._ ”

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Karen props her feet on the floor and takes a second to get her breathing under control, “How does a person get _a little bit stabbed_?”

David’s snort echoes over the connection, “ _You know I never know with our boy. Anyway, are you good for Sunday?_ ”

She blinks at the sudden segue, “Yeah, I’ll see you guys for dinner.”

“ _Tell Tall, Dark, and Grumpy there’s room for him at the table, too_.”

She rolls her eyes and unfolds from the couch, pushes the throw blanket off her legs and heads over to the bathroom to dig her first aid kit out from under the sink, “Good night, David.”

Once she has the kit spread out next to the sink, it occurs to her that she doesn’t know if Frank’s coming in from the front door or the fire escape, but considering he’s bleeding and probably toting around ten tons of Kevlar and at least one weapon, the window is probably her best bet.

Pulling the curtain aside, she scans the alley below, but sees nothing—not that she thought she’d see anything.

She props against the wall next to the window, tapping her fingers against her opposite arm. After a few minutes, she hears the barely-there thud and creak of moment on the old iron stairs above her window, and then—

“ _Oh, for fucks-_ ”

With a laugh, she pops her head out the window, “Hi Frank.”

Halfway down the ladder that leads to her landing, Frank pauses, and even through the darkness, Karen sees him shake his head, "Karen-“

“David told me you were on the way,” she says, pointed. “Get in here.”

Frank makes his way down the rest of the way, with one hand pressed to his side, just below where his vest hits. Karen holds out her arm for him to balance as he fits himself through the window—she was right about all the body armor, which, she gets why he shouldn’t have come in from the front door, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier.

“It’s really not as bad as I’m sure Lieberman made it sound,” Frank says as she snaps the window shut and locks it, tugs the curtain into place.

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Karen grabs his arm and tugs him toward her bathroom, “Did you get stabbed?”

“Uh-yeah.”

“Then it’s as bad as it sounds.”

—

Karen’s bathroom is—

Not exactly designed for two people.

Especially not when one of those people is in need of the kind of medical attention that is usually better handled in an actual hospital.

But, they’ll make do.

She sits Frank down on the toilet and helps him out of his coat, the Kevlar, and the thick thermal shirt he has on under it—back, to hide the blood stains—throws them all in the shower while he presses a pack of gauze to the bleeding wound on his side, “You going to tell me what happened?”

Frank shrugs the shoulder on his uninjured side, “Got stabbed.”

“You’re an asshole,” she resists the urge to poke him and drops to her knees to get a better look, finds the wound isn’t large, but is bleeding sluggishly down into the waist of his jeans.

“Does it matter what happened?”

She looks up at him, nudges his knee with her elbow, “Of course it matters,” she peels at one edge of the gauze, her fingers brushing against his. As much as she hoped it wouldn’t need stitches, with her luck, of course that’s the case. “Keep putting pressure on that.”

He does, and being here, kneeling on her bathroom floor with Frank with his shirt off, it's—

Definitely not where she thought she’d end her night.

It gives her the chance to take him in in a way she never has before, since every other time she’s seen him, even the ones where he’s covered in blood, he’s been clothed. She’s not surprised to discover Frank is ninety-five percent muscle and five percent scars, including—

“Jesus,” she hisses, runs her fingertips down the line of the jagged scar that cuts through his left side. “Where did this one come from?”

She knows all his scars have stories behind them, none of them good, but this one—is _bad_.

“Rawlins,” he shifts a little, holds the gauze tighter to his side. “Stabbed me right before I killed him.”

Karen frowns, thinks back to the meeting she had with Dinah Madani not long after the carousel incident. Madani had been recovering from being shot in the head, and she invited Karen over for a very, very off-the-record rundown on what happened.

Including everything surrounding Kandahar and the depositions David and Frank gave her, which were—it was a lot.

“He was the rogue CIA agent, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank peels the soaked-through gauze away and reaches for a fresh pack from the kit. “He uh—he tortured me for a few hours.”

Her brows furrow, “A rogue CIA agent tortured an American citizen on American soil?”

The thought makes her seethe and everything goes red at the edges, and even though he’s dead, she wants to hunt him down and make Rawlins _hurt_.

“Hey, don’t go there,” Frank wraps his free hand around her wrist. “He’s already dead and more than got what was coming to him.” She still scowls, and he nudges her with his foot. “I know what you’re thinking Karen, but there’s no point in it. CIA already cleaned house.”

“Yeah, after wreaking ten tons of highly illegal havoc,” she grumbles, but goes back to the kit and digs out the suture kit. “That just got swept under the goddamn rug.”

“I know it’s shitty, but I took care of it.”

Karen wraps her hand around his, “Yeah, but you shouldn’t have had to.”

“I know.”

Another drop of blood seeps its way out from under the gauze, and Karen blinks out of the moment, grabs for the needle.

She reaches for the top of the wound, and Frank lets the gauze fall away, “You need me to walk you through how to do this?”

“No, I’m good.”

His nose wrinkles, “What, you have to help,” Frank breaks off, and she knows he’s biting down on Matt’s name, which she appreciates, because she is holding a needle and doesn’t want to have to stab him for being an ass. “Help any of your other vigilante friends?”

“Nice try,” she snorts. “I picked it up from Elektra. Unlike some people, she thinks it’s a good idea that I know a thing or two about first aid.”

Actually stitching someone’s skin back together is a far cry from the bananas Elektra made her practice on, and Karen winces a little when her fingers slip in Frank’s blood.

“Real spacious in here, huh?” Frank breaks the silence that falls around them as she puts him back together, and she takes it for what it is.

A distraction.

It works.

“Say what you will about my broom-closet of a bathroom, I have surprisingly good water pressure,” she ties off the last stitch, smooths a bandage over it, and then grabs a roll of plastic sheeting from the kit, along with a pair of scissors. “Which you are going to avail yourself of in a minute, because seriously Frank, you stink.”

He snorts, runs the hand not covered in blood through his hair, “Yeah, yeah. Been a long couple days.”

“Doing surveillance?”

Frank hesitates a second, but then. He does nod, “Yeah, for the last thirty-six hours.”

He doesn’t add any details, but she doesn’t expect him to. That was more than she thought she’d get from him in the first place—ignoring the fact that he still hasn’t told her how he ended up taking a knife to the side while doing _surveillance_.

Taping the plastic around the bandage, Karen shakes her head, “Your blood is ninety-five percent caffeine right now, isn’t it?”

With a glance down at the pile of bloodied gauze, Frank shrugs, “That doesn’t look like caffeine to me.”

She grabs the gauze, tosses it in the trash before grabbing the counter and using it as leverage to get back to her feet, “Shower off, I’ll get you some sweats. You can crash here tonight. Or, well, what’s left of tonight.”

“Karen-“

She cuts him off, because it’s too damn late for an argument, especially not when she has his blood all over her, “It’s the middle of the night and you haven’t slept in almost two days. You’re staying.”

For a moment, she thinks he’s going to argue, but then Frank slumps a little, like exhaustion just hit him all at once, and he nods wearily, “Thanks Karen.”

“Of course,” she grabs the bloodied clothes out of the tub. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes with some clothes you can wear.”

Karen slips out of the bathroom, crosses through the living room and drops the clothes in the kitchen sink, turns on the faucet. She runs her hands under the stream of water until they’re free of blood, and behind her, she hears the bathroom door click shut and the shower turn on.

Trailing back into her bedroom, Karen digs through the depths of her dresser for the oversized sweats she picked up not long after she got to the city. It was her first winter in New York, living in an apartment that was little more than a box with a faulty radiator. When it failed the night before Christmas, she splurged some of her meager savings on the sweats, because it was that or freeze to death since her landlord didn’t get around to fixing it until well after New Year’s.

Frank makes his way into her bedroom a few minutes after the water cuts off, wearing the sweats and rubbing one of her spare towels over his damp hair.

“You want to take the left side?” Karen asks while plugging in her phone on her nightstand. “Closer to the bathroom.”

He flicks his eyes from one side of the room to the other, and then glances over his shoulder, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take the right.”

Closer to the window. She should have guessed.

Karen doesn’t blink, slips into bed on the side she usually sleeps on anyway, “Sure.”

But Frank hesitates, “You sure you’re okay with this? I can take the couch.”

“The couch that’s half your size?” She rolls her eyes and pushes one of the pillows toward the other side of the bed for him. “Just get in here.”

“Karen-“

“I’m exhausted and you’ve been _stabbed_ , what do you think is going to happen here?”

Frank scoffs, shakes his head before pulling the covers to his side back, but then he hesitates again, “I uh, I don’t always sleep too well.”

“Neither do I,” Karen shrugs, like it’s nothing.

By this point in her life, it really is.

At that, Frank frowns, but Karen shrugs again, lies down, “We’ve both been through shit Frank, you know that. Now come on, let’s go to sleep.”

—

Karen wakes to warmth.

Warmer than she’s been in weeks, months even, lying on her side with her arm curled up under her pillow.

It’s a long minute before she wakes up enough for reality to reassert itself, and she blinks sleep from her eyes, heart skipping when she realizes _why_ she’s so warm.

Because, at some point after they went to sleep lying on their respective sides of the bed, Frank migrated over to hers and curled up around her in his sleep.

She can’t risk moving, barely breathes as she takes stock, wakes up a little more to figure that Frank has mashed his face into her shoulder, warming her skin through her sleep shirt with each deep, steady breath he takes, an arm slung tight around her waist and his palm wrapped around her wrist.

Karen takes another slow breath, and then another, tries to think about what the hell she’s supposed to do now, but all she can think about is that Frank is not just in her bed, but in her bed _and_ cuddling her, which she doubts he even knows he’s doing, because he’s _asleep_.

Hell, it’s probably just his subconscious thinking he’s back in bed with his wife.

Her heart breaks at the thought, and she knows she needs to get up, get moving before Frank wakes and realizes what he did.

But then, because the universe _hates her guts_ , she feels Frank’s breathing shift.

He exhales, long and slow, sending a steady stream of warmth down her back before he moves, lifting his head off her back. But instead of pulling away, Frank buries his nose into her shoulder blade for a few breaths, and it’s all she can do to keep her own breading steady, to let him think she’s still asleep. The hand on her wrist twitches, but instead of letting go, he draws his hand up and down her arm a couple times, wraps his fingers around hers where it’s curled up against her chest.

She feels him sigh against her, and then he lets go, rolls away and slips out of bed.

The cold returns.

Karen doesn’t dare move, barely breathes as she listens to Frank pad out of the room.

She expects to hear rustling as he gets his things together, before the opening and closing of her front door, but instead, the bathroom door shuts with a quiet click before she hears Frank relieve himself, the toilet flushing, and the sink turning on.

Rolling on to her back, Karen waits to hear the sounds of him actually leaving, but the footsteps trail in the opposite direction, and then there’s the kitchen sink going before the coffeemaker turns on.

With a quiet groan she can’t hold back, Karen scrubs a hand over her face before she finally sits up. She snags an oversized sweater off the chair next to her closet—a repository of clothes she’s worn, but can still be worn again before laundry day. Before she leaves her bedroom, Karen takes one last deep, steadying breath, before squaring her shoulders and stepping into the living room.

The floors are freezing as she makes her way to the kitchen, heaves herself up onto a stool and props her head on her hand, “Morning,” she mutters, eyes trained on her ancient drip coffeemaker, because it’s easier to watch coffee fill the pot than it is to look at Frank, when he looks like _that_ this early in the morning.

It’s rude, that’s what it is.

“Morning,” he rasps.

_Goddamnit_ , when he looks _and_ sounds like he does.

_Rude_.

It’s way too early for this.

Frank looks as bleary-eyed as she assumes she is, scratches at his jaw before he digs through her collection of mismatched coffee mugs in the cabinet above. He passes her a steaming mug, and Karen takes a long sip, “How’s your side?”

“Feels like I got stabbed in it.”

With the side of her face still smashed into her palm, Karen shifts just enough so she can glower at him without actually lifting her head, “Next time you tangle with those assholes who stabbed you, tell them to aim for your sense of humor, instead of your side.”

Frank wrinkles his nose, hesitates a second before taking another sip of coffee, “I’d keep that in mind, if they weren’t, you know,” he tilts his head, pointed. “Already dead.”

“Yeah yeah, you _put them down and they stay down_.”

For a moment, he goes deathly still, and then she sees him swallow, “Murdock told you about that.”

It’s not a question, and _damnit_ , she really needs her internal filter to kick in, because it’s too early to deal with Frank’s continuing insecurity about Matt, “He may have mentioned it.”

“You and Murdock make a habit about talking about me?”

Karen snorts, “Definitely not,” she takes another sip of coffee, smirks up at him. “I’m not sure if you know this, but he still doesn’t like you all that much.”

“I had _no_ idea.”

They finish drinking their coffee in a relatively comfortable silence, and ever so slowly, Karen feels her internal filter kick back in.

Good, because she needs it.

“Are you going to David and Sarah’s tomorrow night?”

Frank nods, “I was going to head down there after group. Do you want me to pick you up on the way?”

“Sure.”

He drains the last of his coffee, places the mug in the sink, “Thank for that, and helping patch me up last night. You might if I stash the vest here until I have my truck tomorrow?”

“Not like I’m going to be any less of an accessory if I say no.”

“ _Karen_.”

“What?”

—

It’s another in a string of late nights at the office working on an all-hands-on-deck case that finds Karen, Matt and Foggy camped out in the lobby, their files spread out around them.

Ever since she was a kid, Karen would work like this on big projects, sitting on the floor with all her work spread out around her, and she took that with her to _Nelson & Murdock_, The Bulletin, and now back to _NM &P_. She’s never felt in her element more than she does when she’s got everything around her, files open like pieces of a puzzle.

And when they solve that puzzle, it means they get to _help_ the people who need it.

That means more to Karen than just about anything.

She’s reading through a deposition they inherited when, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Matt’s head snap up, and she puts the paperwork down, “What is it?”

His brows furrow, and he takes a deep breath, “Someone’s bringing in Royal Dragon.”

At this time of night, they’re the only offices still occupied in their building so—

“Huh?” Foggy cuts off her train of thought, but he’s distracted and doesn’t look up from the legal pad he’s taking notes on. “Did you remember to order my fried rice?”

“I didn’t order anything,” Karen shakes her head, and Matt nods the same.

Seconds later, there’s a knock on the door, and Karen scrambles to her feet because she’s closest.

Before she can get a word in, a delivery boy wearing a scarf and Royal Dragon cap says, “Order for Page, Nelson, and Murdock?”

“That’s us, but we didn’t call in any orders.”

The guy looks at her like he does not have time for this “Some guy called it in,” he looks at the receipt stapled to one of the bags. “Pete Castigli-something or other.”

Karen blinks.

“What?”

“Some guy—look, it’s already been paid for, so do you want it or not?”

He holds out the bags, and Karen barely feels the warmth emanating from them as she takes them and heads back inside the office.

Inside, Foggy is staring at her, and Matt is looking in her direction in that piercing way of his that never fails to set her on edge, “So,” she laughs, but it’s strained. “Who’s hungry?”

“Who’s Pete?”

She tilts her head, pointed, and Foggy tips his right back, play-mocking, until his eyes go wide, “ _Why is Frank Castle buying us dinner?_ ” He whisper-shouts, head whipping around like he’s going to emerge from the shadows of any one of their offices or something.

“I don’t know,” she peeks into one of the bags. “But he got your fried rice order.”

It takes a second, but then Foggy holds his hand out, thought he looks distinctly uncomfortable, “Give it here.”

Karen hands him the entire bag to pick through, drops the second in the open space on the floor between her and Matt, who looks up at her pensively, follows her movements as she sits back down, “Karen?”

“I don't know what you want me to say,” she digs into the big and finds a carton of steaming orange chicken. “I don’t have a way to explain this that will make sense to you.”

—

After a few more hours of puzzle-piecing their case together, they decide to finally call it a night and head home.

Karen hisses at the blast of cold air that hits her when they step out onto the street, curses that she forgot her scarf and gloves at home, because it was one of those rare, warm winter days in the city.

Emphasis on _day_ , since the nights are still icy-old, especially with the wind whipping down the street, and the cold isn’t likely to let up for at least another long few months.

Foggy is locking the front door behind them, and Karen dips her hand into her purse to grab her phone so she can get a Lyft home—it’s too damn late and too damn cold to walk—when Matt places a hand on her arm, staling her.

“What is it?”

He cocks his head to the right, where a truck rumbles to life, and the headlights blinking on make her squint. If it weren’t for the fact that Matt is completely relaxed, she’d be reaching for her .380.

“Your ride is here.”

Karen frowns at the truck, looks back at Matt—and then it clicks, “Has he been out here all night?”

The look on Matt’s face is placid, but he’s always been a shit liar—other than the Daredevil stuff.

Karen sighs and shakes her head.

The men in her life are absurd.

The truck pulls out of the parking spot, eases its way up the street and stops in front of them. Behind her, Foggy turns around after fighting with the sticky look on the front door in time to see the passenger window slide down, “ _Holy shit!_ ” He startles and slams his back into the door.

Inside the truck, Frank snorts, takes a sip of what’s probably coffee from the thermos in the hand not resting on the steering wheel, “Counselor, Red,” he looks at Karen, inclines his head. “You ready to go home?”

“Yeah,” she nods, everything on her face telling Frank that he didn’t have to _do this_ , before she turns back to Matt and Foggy. “See you Monday.”

She pulls herself into the warmer confines of the truck, holds one hand out for the thermos and buckles up with her free hand.

“Night Karen,” Matt pauses, pointed. “Get her home safe,” he adds with more than a little threat in his tone before Frank rolls the window up in response.

Before it closes completely, she hears Foggy ask Matt, “How the hell is this her life?”

She snorts as Frank pulls away, takes another sip of coffee before she turns to take in his profile, “Thanks for dinner,” he grunts, an acknowledgment, she guesses. “You know, you really didn’t have to wait up out here in the cold.”

“You work too hard, ma’am,” he says, and her brows hike to her hairline, because it’s been _forever_ since he’s called her that.

“ _Really_ , Frank.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he glances at her out of the corner of his eye before turning right, toward her apartment.

Yeah, that’s a steaming slice of bullshit right there.

It won’t take long to get home, but she’s damn lucky she doesn’t have to brave the cold this late. Karen settles deeper into the seat, reaches out to adjust the vents to get the heat on her a little better, and then turns back to watch Frank drive, the city lights flickering over his face.

It’s nights like these where she wants nothing more than to tell Frank she fucking loves him, that the clench in her heart feels like a stab at the thought of him spending hours outside her office, in the dark and in the cold where she knows he thinks he belongs, waiting for her so she doesn’t have to make her way home by herself.

Fuck, really.

How has this become her life?

—

The only reason Karen doesn’t go for her .380 when she opens the door to her apartment and hears the low murmur of a television she did not leave on when she left for work that morning, is because Frank texted her and let her know he broke in.

At this point, she might as well just make him a key.

“Just me,” she calls, low, and drops her bag on the floor next to the lamp, clicks it on.

It lights the room just enough for her to see Frank sprawled out across her couch.

“Hey,” he says in a low rasp, followed by the crinkling of a once-frozen ice pack.

Leaving her snow-dampened jacket on the hanger, Karen kicks off her shoes before heading straight for the bottle of whiskey she keeps next to the microwave. She pours a generous double into one of the coffee mugs in the drying rack next to the sink and knocks it back.

“Rough day?” Frank asks after she places the mug down on the counter with a _clang_.

“That case we were working on last week,” Frank grunts in acknowledgment of the night he ordered them dinner and drove her home. She takes another sip, lets the liquor burn its way down her throat. “We lost. Some bureaucratic bullshit. It should have been open-shut, with all the evidence we had, and I just—I don’t know what the hell happened.”

Frank tilts his head, eyebrow arched, “Think it’s dirty?”

“No,” she sighs—she wishes a little bit, deep, deep down that that was the case. At least then, she knows how it could play out. “Just racist.”

His lip curls in disgust as he scoffs, “That is bullshit. Sorry Karen.”

Sighing again, Karen takes one last sip of shaky before capping the bottle. She walks over to the couch and pulls the ice pack off Fran’s eye, dropping it in the bowl he left for it on the coffee table. It’s going to bruise, but definitely not as badly as she’s seen him—read: the diner.

She traces around the edge of the bruise before tapping his shoulder, “Come on, sit up a little.”

One eyebrow arches, and Karen arches on right back until Frank sits up with a grunt that means he probably took a couple hits to the chest too. She wedges into the corner of the couch and pulls Frank by the shoulder back down to her lap, props one foot on the coffee table. As Frank shifts and resettles, Karen drops her hand to his hairline, her thumb tracing the edge of the bruise where it’s already spreading above his eyebrow, “You going to tell me what the hell happened to your face?”

“Eh, just some jackass skin traders messing around down by the docks. I took care of it.”

Of course he did.

She taps the edge of the bruise, “You hurt anywhere else.”

“One bullet, just hit my vest, and a couple scrapes,” he waves a hand, sleeve sliding back to reveal a bandage around his forearm.

“Please tell me you didn’t make a mess in my bathroom,” Karen look down at him, pointed, and he answers with a wordless shrug that she responds with a roll of her eyes. “So, am I going to read about it in the paper tomorrow?”

“You might.”

With a shake of her head, Karen drops her free hand to his chest, “You’re a troublemaker, Castle.”

He shrugs again, his shoulder digging into her stomach, “Never said I wasn’t.”

Something on the television flickers, and Karen glances up to see one of those pretentious shows where rich people search for their own perfect private island cut to commercial. Her gaze snaps back down when Frank curls his fingers around her own, presses her hand to his chest.

She sighs, lets the weight from Frank’s upper body press her deeper into the couch cushions.

“What’s on your mind, Karen?”

For a minute, she stares off toward the window, to the city beyond and all the filth that never seems to _stop_ , “Sometimes I want to put this whole goddamn city in my rearview mirror.”

After a second, Frank hums, “So why don’t you?”

She knows he would love nothing more than for her to do that, to settle down somewhere safer and live that quiet life.

The words—the truth—are on the tip of her tongue, and after the day she’s had, she’s too tired to hold them back, “The people I love are here,” she powers through, even when he freezes against her. “I don’t have family anymore, so this is all I’ve got.”

Frank squeezes her fingers, “Not just this, Karen,” he says into the quiet that settled around them. “Not just this.”

There’s so much she wants to say to that, but she can’t.

She won’t.

Sighing again, Karen runs her fingers through his hair, settles in to embrace the quiet.

—

She is on the verge of losing it.

Thinking about it, Karen knows that for most _normal_ people, they’d probably meet that edge somewhere around spending the night in bed together and waking up curled in one another’s arms, but no.

Not for her.

The little masochist inside her has such a goddamn tolerance for pain that sure, it didn’t help, but all it did was blur the line between her and Frank further.

And it’s everything that came after that has made it so much worse. It’s got her on edge, like they’re on the precipice of something, but she can’t see where the line is.

Frank can.

He always has, and he’s never going to cross it.

And it’s absolutely driving her nuts.

So, Karen goes to the one person in her life safe enough to actually talk about it.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Karen sighs and takes another long sip of rosé. “We’re just suck in this really shitty stalemate.”

Maybe getting drunk in the middle of the day on a Saturday isn’t the best way to handle this, but fortunately, Sarah’s the only Lieberman to see her in this state—and she’s partaking too.

No one drinks alone.

Sarah shakes her head even as she takes a sip from her own glass, “Karen, the man loves you. You have to know that.”

But the problem is she _doesn’t_ know that, and it kills her that apparently _other people out there_ think so, when she doesn’t nearly have the same conviction.

She _can’t_ have that same conviction, not after what happened at the hospital.

Even that night in the car, on their way home after the world’s most awkward dinner, when Frank told her the truth—that didn’t help.

He may love her, but he doesn’t love her _enough_ to give up the shit he thinks he deserves, and no one gets that like she does.

“That’s not the point.”

“But it is.”

Karen shakes her head, again, because Sarah _just doesn’t get it_ , and she knows it’s primarily her fault, “I tried, Sarah, months ago, but he doesn’t want that. He’s made that crystal clear, more than once. The boundary he put up between us is firm, and I know he’s not going to cross it.”

“Have you ever thought that things may have changed? That he might have changed his mind?” Sarah asks. “Look at how much time he’s spending with you now. All the things that have happened since New Year’s. This has to be different.”

Immediately, she thinks of more than a year of his insistence that Matt was a viable romantic prospect, “This is Frank. When he sets his mind to something, then it’s set. Trust me on that one.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?”

Her eyes sting, and she turns her gaze down to her glass, “I don’t think there’s anything _to_ do,” which fucking sucks, but that’s where she is and where things have always stood with Frank. “I just needed to whine at about this for a while.”

Sarah raises her glass, “Whine with wine.”

Toasting back, Karen takes a long sip, “Thanks for putting up with this. I’m sure you have better things to do with your Saturday.”

“Drinking with my friend, or folding my husband’s laundry? I think you and I both know where I’d rather be.”

Karen slumps deeper into the couch, like her one and only hope is to become one with the fabric, “Why is this my life?”

—

The last thing Karen expects to see is David walk inside a few hours later.

And with Frank at his heels.

But with the way her day, week, month, _the last three years of her life_ has gone, of course that’s what happens.

  
They’re muttering quietly, and Karen’s not nearly sober enough to try to parse it, but it cuts off as soon as they see her and Sarah curled up on the couch.

David stops short in the doorway and Frank walks into his back, “The hell Lieberman?”

Elbowing him in the side while nodding in their direction, David clears his throat, “Everything all right ladies?”

“Of course!” Sarah chirps while Karen waves a hand in acknowledgment, knows that they’re the perfect caricatures of Happy!Drunk and Grumpy!Drunk at this point in the afternoon. “Why would anything be wrong?”

“Because you’re day-drinking, Sarah.”

Sarah looks at the glass in her hand like she forgot it was there, leans forward and places it on the coffee table, “Nothing’s wrong,” she says with a bright smile, and Karen is more than happy to let her take control of the situation, because she can handle _none of this_ , especially now with the way Frank is watching her intently. “Frank, what brings you by?”

After a second, he tears his gaze away from Karen, “Just some business, you know,” he says with a pointed tilt of his head in the direction of the basement, but then he looks back at Karen. “You sure everything’s all right?”

She nods, probably more than she needs to, and all she wants to do is curl up and die.

A very uncomfortable silence falls over the living room, no one moving, before David finally breaks it with a forced laugh, “Well, Frank and I will be downstairs if you need us,” he says, claps a hand on Frank’s shoulder and pulls him toward the basement.

The door closes behind them, the sounds of their footsteps fading down the stairs, and Karen places her glass on the coffee table so she can bury her head in her hands, “Sarah, _why_ is this happening to me?”

Sarah pats a hand on her shoulder, and Karen groans, lists to the side and lands boneless on Sarah’s lap, “I have no idea Karen, but you’re going to get through this. You both will.”

Groaning into her palm, Karen squeezes her eyes shut.

Maybe if she lies there long enough, she’ll be able to just—pretend this day isn’t happening.

—

By the time Frank and David make their way back upstairs, done with whatever their _business_ is, Karen and Sarah relocated to the dining room, soaking up the wine they’ve consumed with sourdough bread and brie cheese.

The bread is the best bread Karen has ever had.

She wants to build _shrines_ to this bread.

Yeah, she might still be drunk.

God, she used to have a much higher tolerance than this.

Even through her wine-soaked haze, Karen feels the burn of Frank’s concerned gaze on her, and she resists the urge to flinch, takes another large bite of bread and cheese. She knows he has a thousand questions, and she is not in the position to answer any of them in this state.

David reaches across the table and tears off a chunk of bread, “You ladies have any plans for the rest of the afternoon? Need us to go make a run for more wine?”

“No thanks _honey_ ,” Sarah says, sarcasm heavy in her tone before it turns on a dime to painfully sweet. “Did you two finish your secret murder-business?”

“Nothing to worry about,” Frank grunts, dismissive, and leans back against the counter.

Sarah blinks, and looks back at David, “Are we going to have to call Agent Madani and get put into protective custody, _again_?”

“No, no,” David sputters. “Nothing like that, It’s fine. Promise.”

“You’re a lot better at downplaying things than he is,” Karen laughs around another bite of bread as she gestures with her free hand at Frank.

He scowls, and Karen rolls her eyes right back.

“So,” Sarah claps her hands together, looks at Frank. “What plans do you have for tonight? Laundry? Some light reading? Murder?”

Okay, so Sarah is definitely still drunk too.

And she’s pretty sure Frank knows that, because he blinks and then shakes his head, “Nah, just group. I gotta get back to the city in a bit.”

“Well that’s perfect,” Sarah looks back at Karen, a glint in her eye that sets her on edge. “Frank can drive you home on his way to group.”

Karen turns her glare to Sarah, “ _Traitor_ ,” she mouths, her scowl deepening as the smug look on Sarah’s face grows.

Of course, Frank doesn’t see the exchange as he pushes off the counter, fishes his keys from his pocket, “You ready to go?”

With one last scowl at Sarah, Karen gets up, swipes the remaining half-loaf of bread off the table, “Sure. Thanks for the talk Sarah, and the wine!”

Frank helps her into her coat and they let themselves out, Karen cursing at the cold as they hustle to his truck.

Once the door closes behind them, David looks at his wife, “You want to explain to me what the hell that was all about?”

Still smug, Sarah picks at another bite of brie, “Trust me, they needed that,” she glances around the table, and the smirk fades into a frown. “Damnit, we’re out of bread.”

—

Safely ensconced in Frank’s truck and out of the cold, Karen fiddles with the vents. With ice-cold fingers before she flops against the passenger door like it’s far too much effort to sit upright, and stares out the windshield. She’s starting to sober up, and she’s going to have to drink _so much water_ when she gets home if she wants to have any hope of avoiding a hangover from hell.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Frank asks after while of driving in less than comfortable silence.

“Not particularly.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Karen sees Frank’s nose twitch in that way it does when he’s annoyed, “What’s going on Karen?”

“Nothing Frank,” she says, because she is not getting into this with him. “Everything’s fine.”

“If everything’s fine, why did you get drunk with Sarah in the middle of the day?”

“ _Because I can._ ”

Frank sighs, “Come on Karen, talk to me.”

The words are right there, waiting on the tip of her tongue, and the rosé has loosened her up just enough to make it impossible to tamp down on them.

“I wish I knew how to talk to you like I used to.”

He goes quiet for a moment, flicks a quick look at her as he drives.

“What do you mean?”

She sighs, “There’s just—there are things that I want to say to you, but I know I can’t. And it sucks.”

“Karen,” Frank lets out a deep breath, and she knows where he’s going with this.

“No, no,” she cuts him off before he can finish, because she’s already drunk and a little heartbroken, no need to make it even worse. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just a little drunk. Don’t mind me.”

He reaches across, curls his hand around the closest part of her, which is the knee she has bent up against the console, “I always mind you.”

Goddamnit, he can’t keep doing this to her.

Her eyes sting, and she’s overly emotional and not sober enough for this, “I’ll be fine, Frank,” she looks down at his hand on her knee, and slowly inches her leg way.

Frank sighs, but leaves it at that.

From the ensuing silence, she figures Frank is going to drop her off in front of her building like he usually does when he takes her home, but Frank Castle’s Freakish Ability To Find A Good Parking Space In NYC strikes again, and before she knows it, he’s helping her out of his truck and walking her the half-block up to her building.

He swings an arm over her shoulders and guides her up the steps to her front door, waits for her to dig out her keys.

“Thought you said you had to get to group,” she mutters under her breath, stumbles over the threshold and nearly face-plants in her hallway until Frank’s arm tightens around her shoulders and he hauls her back upright, guides her to her couch and pushes her down in the corner next to the blankets she keeps out when it’s cold.

Well, colder than usual.

She’s always cold.

Frank grabs one of the blankets and tosses it on her lap before heading to the kitchen, “Curt won’t mind if I’m late when I tell him it’s your fault.”

“That’s so nice,” Karen slumps agains the arm of the couch, getting to the point in her drunkenness where it’s too much of a bother to sit upright. “Getting me in trouble with people I don’t know.”

With a snort, Frank fills up three glasses full of water, brings them over and leaves them on the coffee table, “Nah, it’ll be all right,” he hands her one of the glasses. “Drink all three before you pass out, yeah?”

Karen takes a sip, “Yeah, I will,” she flaps a hand toward the door. “You should get going.”

But he doesn’t move, just stands there and watches her drink before he sighs. Then, he leans down and runs his palm over the side of her head, thumb stroking over her temple, “I’ll come back tomorrow. We can talk about this when you’re sober.”

She’s too tired to do anything but lean into the warmth of his hand, “What’s there to talk about?”

Frank’s fingertips slide into the hair at the nape of her neck, flexing for a moment before he draws away, “I think there might be a couple things.”

—

Despite drinking her actual weight in water, which makes her stumble back and forth between the bed and the bathroom forty-seven times over night, Karen still wakes the next morning with a crick in her neck, a hangover worse than when she was detoxing all those years ago, and the vague recollection that Frank promised he was going to come over.

To talk about _a couple things_.

Karen hunches over her steaming mug of coffee, picks at the half-loaf of sourdough bread she definitely remembers snatching off the table at David and Sarah’s yesterday.

And she does not feel one bit of guilt about it, because even without the brie, it’s the best bread she’s ever had.

She spends the day lazing around on her couch, embracing being as tired and sloth-like in a way she hasn’t been since she was a kid. At one point, her phone buzzes with a series of texts from Sarah, lamenting about her own hangover and how the kids _just won’t stop talking_ , and how she wants to kick everyone out of the house for a little while.

_Aren’t teenagers supposed to never want to be at home? What is wrong with my children?_

Karen snorts, “ _I’m not expert. There’s a reason why I’m in my 30s and don’t have kids_ ,” she texts back. “ _Hope your head stops hurting soon._ ”

She gets a row of face-plant emojis in return, and Karen shakes her had, drops her phone on the couch next to her lap.

A few hours go by, and she’s just about thinking she’s finally become one with the couch when there’s a knock on the door.

Her stomach drops.

Running her fingers through her hair, Karen heaves off the couch and pads over to the door, where she finds Frank Castle standing on the other side, flowers in hand.

Her heart clenches, because the flowers plus the secret meeting yesterday with David—she knows what this means.

He’s going to ground.

Frank is leaving.

It was bound to happen, of course it was, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

—

She and Frank end up on opposite sides of her kitchen counter.

The roses are between them in a vase she dug out of the depths of the cabinet under her sink, almost like a barrier, and the coffee dripping out of the coffeemaker is the only sound in her apartment.

Where Frank managed to dig up a bouquet of roses in the ass end of winter, Karen will never know, and she’s not about to ask, because she doesn’t know what the hell she’s supposed to say right now.

Because he’s leaving.

It could be years before she sees him again.

If ever.

“How’s your hangover?”

She sighs, tamps down on the urge to snap at them for starting this conversation off with _small talk_ , “My head finally stopped pounding an hour ago.”

“Shoulda warned you, Sarah’s liable to drink you under the table with that rosé.”

“Oh no, she’s hungover too.”

Frank shakes his head and laughs as she passes him a cup of coffee, “You two are trouble.”

“You know, our friendship is _technically_ your fault,” she says over the rim of her mug, smiling in spite of the fact that her heart is breaking.

“Yeah, yeah,” Frank takes another sip of coffee, and then places the mug on the counter, looks her in the eye. “Karen, think we can talk now?”

This is the part she was hopping to avoid. She swallows hard, and then nods, her gaze flickering to the roses between them, “Sure,” reaching out, she runs her fingertips over the velvet-soft petals, and really, where did he _find_ these? “Does this mean you’re going back to burners?”

Frank frowns, “What-no. I’m not. Why would you think that?”

Is he really going to make this so hard on her?

“Because you’re _leaving_ ,” she manages to say through a painfully tight throat.

His frown deepens, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then why with the flowers?”

“Because they’re _for_ you, not for covert communication,” clearly frustrated, Frank rakes a hand through his hair. “I told you I was going to come back and talk with you about whatever it is you wanted to talk about yesterday. I thought you’d like them, because of how long you kept the last bunch.”

“How do you know that?”

“Ah,” Frank scrapes a hand over the back of his neck, looks away from her. “That’s not really the point of what we have to talk about, I don’t think.”

Karen tilts her head, and yeah, his ears are going red, “I think that’s _exactly_ the point of what we have to talk about.”

With a shake of his head, Frank sits up straight, and then nods to the couch, “You mind?”

Her heart takes up residence in her throat, and Karen lets her hand fall from the roses, follows him to the couch. It’s really not that big, barely long enough for her to stretch out on, so when she sits and angles to face him, their knees brush, “So?”

Frank wrings his hands together, and she can see his index finger twitching, which sets Karen’s nerves on edge. His throat works, and he opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and reconsiders, then—

“Frank?”

“I can’t stop thinking about waking up next to you, and that _terrifies_ me. It terrifies me, Karen.”

Oh.

“Shit,” she claps a hand over her mouth as soon as she says it, but there’s no taking it back.

Frank looks distinctly uncomfortable, like he’s about to bolt, “Shit?”

“No, not _bad_ shit,” she backtracks as quickly as she can get the words out, because _fuck,_ why is this so damn difficult? “Just— _shit_. I’ve been having the same problem.”

At that, Frank rocks back like he’s been punched in the gut, like somehow he just realized that he’s not the only one who’s been spiraling in a whirlwind of _shit_ for weeks, months even, “Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_ ,” she can’t help but smile a little and nudges his arm. “So, what are we going to do about it?”

Frank pulls away a little, and she frowns while he looks down at his hands, “That’s the problem. I just—I don’t see how this _can_ work. It’s not safe.”

“I think you’re the safest person I know, Frank.”

“But I’m _not_ safe, Karen,” he insists like it hurts to say the words. “Yeah, it’s been a quiet few weeks, but I’ve had quiet weeks before. Quiet _months_ even. I’ve gone long enough that I toyed with the idea that maybe this can be the way my life is like now, but it never lasts. It won’t. I’m always going to get drawn back into something bloody, and I can’t let you get hurt because of it.”

Goddamn it, _again with this shit_.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m not safe either?” She snaps, because she is _tired_ of this. “You know Wilson Fisk wants me dead. And sure, he’s in prison because Matt has some dirt to hold over his head, but don’t think for a second that I’m comforted by that. You and I both know he’s not going to be willing to rot in prison for the rest of hiss pitiful existence. He’ll be back, I’ll be in danger again, it’ll be bloody, and that has _nothing_ to do with you.”

She rakes a hand through her hair, “Just find yourself a new excuse,” she pushes off the couch, because she can’t be this close to him if he’s going to break her heart, _again_ , and props herself up next to the window. “Or don’t. If you don’t want to be with me, the fine. Don’t twist yourself in knots over it. I’m an adult, I can handle it.”

“No, Karen, it’s not—“

“Then what is it, Frank? I’m just so—I’m so tired. I don’t want to keep doing this, this thing where we both _clearly_ know what we want and it’s the same damn thing, but you just keep pushing me away anyway.”

Frank pushes off the couch, “The problem is I don’t know how to do this, Karen!” He ducks his head, sighs heavily, and she flinches when he runs a hand over the spot where she knows his scar is. “I’m just not that guy anymore, the one who stumbles into a relationship because the pretty girl at the park is begging him to stop singing. He died with the rest of—the rest of my family.”

Oh—

Her shoulders drop, and Karen blinks back the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, scrubs a hand over her face, “ _Frank_ ,” she sighs, walks over to him. Reaching out, she hesitates for a moment before wrapping her fingers around his wrist. “Frank, look at me, please.”

But he doesn’t, and Karen shakes her head, flexes her fingers around his wrist. He still doesn’t look at her, and Karen takes a steadying breath, cups her palm over the line of his jaw and tips his head up, “Frank,” she feels the muscles in his jaw work, like he wants to break away and run, but he doesn’t, and that gives her just a little bit of hope. “Frank. I never knew the Frank Castle from before everything went to hell. I know you can’t be him again, but I’m not looking for that man. I know who you are, right now, today, and that’s who I want. The Frank Castle who is also the Punisher, but who is _also_ a good man. You’re it for me.”

“Karen,” Frank’s voice breaks on her name, and she watches him swallow hard before his eyes close, like he can’t look at her while he asks. “Are you sure?”

She tips her forehead to his, brushes her nose against the side of his when she nods, “I am.”

Frank’s eyes snap open, somehow shocked by her answer, “Karen,” he breaks off again, cups his hand over the nape of her neck. “I do—I want this.”

“Then let yourself have it,” she squeezes his wrist, slips her hand down and laces their fingers together, his palm warming her own. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His fingers flex around hers, and he uses the connection to tug her into that last inch of space between them, “Okay.”

A blinding grin spreads across Karen’s faces, and she nudges into his forehead with a playfulness she hasn’t felt in a long, long time, “ _Okay_?”

His dark eyes flash as Frank looks at her like he doesn’t know what to do with her, but with the hand cupped around her neck, he tugs her in and kisses her.

Kissing Frank is—god, she feels so fucking cheesy, but it’s good, it’s so good. The rasp of his stubble against her thumb as she runs it back and forth over his jaw, the perfect fit of his mouth against hers, and the way his tongue slips against hers, sending a bolt of liquid head straight down to her core.

_Why_ did they wait so long to do this?

Frank pulls away, but doesn’t go far, lets go of her hand and wraps his arm tight around her waist, presses his face into the side of her neck and breathes, “ _Okay_ ,” he murmurs against her skin before he sighs. “I don’t know how to do this.”

Sliding her hand around to the back of his neck, Karen gently squeezes his nape, turns and presses her mouth to his temple, right above his scar, “It’s okay,” she tucks her fingertips under his chin and guides his head back up, pulls his mouth back to hers. “We’ll figure it out.”

—

Karen wakes to warmth.

Buried under a small mountain of blankets, Frank curled around her as they slept, but this time she knows he was aware of it, because it’s the same way they fell asleep, sometime in the early hours of the morning.

She’s a little surprised that neither of them woke up in the middle of the night, but she also knows that it’s not always going to be this quiet, this peaceful of a waking.

But right now, she’ll absolutely take what she can get.

Because Frank is warm against her back, one hand curled around the curve of her bare hip and the other wrapped around her waist, palm on her chest and his face buried in the back of her neck. With a sleepy sigh, Karen slips her fingers into the spaces between his, smiling when his fingers twitch and hold her tight.

His chest expands into her back as he takes a deep breath, waking up, and then he presses a slow kiss to her nape, “Morning,” he murmurs into her skin, voice low and rough and it makes her shiver, but definitely not from the cold.

She’s finally not cold anymore.

“G’morning,” she says, quiet, and rolls over in his arms, buries her head against his neck. “You sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs against her forehead, his lips trailing back and forth over her hairline. “What time is it?”

Karen leans up a little, stretches across Frank to reach for her phone on her nightstand. It also happens that her chest presses against his face as she leans, which—

Okay, so that might have been a little bit on purpose.

She leans on the strong curve of his muscled shoulder, feels his mouth press to the side of her breast, and she digs her fingers into the short hairs at the nape of his neck in response, focuses on checking the time, “It’s almost seven,” she presses more of her weight into Frank’s shoulder until he gets the hint and rolls onto his back, both of his hands sliding down to rest on the curve of her backside. “I have to be at work in a couple—oh, hold on, Foggy’s calling.”

Sliding down a little so her boobs aren’t in his face anymore, Karen kisses his cheek, then the corner of his mouth, “Stay quiet,” she whispers, tapping a finger against his lips before she accepts the call. “Morning Foggy.”

“ _Please tell me you know where the Callaghan deposition is,_ ” she hears the sound of rustling over the connection, which means Foggy’s frantically searching through the mountains of paperwork in his office for it.

It takes a second to think about the files she packed in her bag on Friday—and has touched none of them—but the Callaghan deposition was not one of them, “No, it’s still on my desk. Why are you at the office so early?”

“ _Oh, you know, just ready to take on the week_ ,” he says as the rustling stops, which is 100% code for: he is in desperate need for a break from wedding planning. “ _Are you going to swing by that awesome coffee shop on the way in?_ ”

Sweeping her sleep-tangled hair to one side, Karen looks down her nose at Frank, who has been stroking his hand back and forth over her backside since she accepted the call, and at the tick of his brow, she _knows_ he knows she’s figured out what he’s up to, “Uh, Foggy, you know-“ she manages before Frank leans up and presses his mouth to hers, quick and playful, and he looks up at her with completely feigned innocence when she scowls at him.

Before she can finish whatever she may or may not have been about to say to Foggy, Frank slips the phone from her fingers and puts it to his ear, “Nelson, she’s not coming in today. Tell Murdock.”

“ _KAREN!_ ” She doesn’t need Foggy to be on speaker to hear that yelp, and she presses her palm to her mouth to stifle her laughter. “ _WHY DOES FRANK CASTLE HAVE YO-“_

Frank disconnects the call and throws the phone onto the clothes-covered chair on the other side of the room.

“Jesus Frank,” she laughs as he pulls her hand away so he can get to her mouth. “You’re going to give that man a heart attack.”

Morning breath be damned, Frank kisses her long and slow, and Karen melts into him, her thumb stroking behind his ear, which makes him shiver, “So,” she murmurs as he pulls away, kisses her cheek, her jaw, and then down to her neck, “If I’m not going to work, what are we going to get up to?”

In one swift move, Frank flips them over, situates one of his knees between her thighs, “All kinds of good shit,” he says into her mouth.

Now, that’s a plan she can get behind.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things that originally turned me off to The Archer was the way the song doesn’t…fall, I guess is the way I can explain it in writing. Usually in songs, there will be some kind of like break or a drop, and The Archer doesn’t have that. I remember seeing on Tumblr that it kind of reminded someone of when you’re really anxious and it just keeps going and going without that feeling going away.
> 
> That said, when I connected The Archer to the nonsense that happened in TPS2, it helped me connect more to the song, and now it’s one of my favorites. 
> 
> I hope that I was able to carry that feeling of something being unfinished and Karen being very unsettled by it, even as she tries to push those feelings away throughout this story. I wanted the early interactions she had with the Liebermans to be like…these are Frank’s people, like he’s hovering off to the side somewhere, about to pop out of a closet or something, even though logically, she knows he’s not there.
> 
> Anyway, happy holidays Kastle fam! You’re one of the greatest fandom groups I’ve ever found my way into and I’m so happy to be a part of it!


End file.
